


Circles

by cellorocket



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, F/M, Longing, Romance, Slow Burn, Smut, awkward dorks being awkward
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 08:38:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 81,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3844360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellorocket/pseuds/cellorocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The story of two people in love is comprised of a thousand beginnings; each significant, each building endlessly on the others." Shenko from the very beginning. ME1</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The story of two people in love is comprised of a thousand beginnings; each significant, each building endlessly on the others.

There are the obvious beginnings: That first glance that becomes an eternity the longer it goes unbroken, the first confession (palms slick with sweat, mouth dry, heart racing), the first kiss.

And there are the lesser known beginnings, the ones that are unique to the people who share them. They are like fingerprints, or the rings on a tree; and these are the beginnings that Kaidan remembers now, decades later. Like circles – the endless, careful circles they danced around one another, futile and undeniable and thrilling.

It's these that are the sweetest.

* * *

 

Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko's transfer to the SSV Normandy was predictably, painfully routine. It had been an unexpected change in plans, but Kaidan had reached the point in his career where he stopped attempting to anticipate his assignments. You could eke out a routine in the military, but in the end, you were at the mercy of a few quick decisions; some on the field, some in the form of paperwork on a superior's desk. He had learned to roll with the punches the hard way.

The transfer itself might have been routine, but the Normandy and its crew were anything but. The servicemen selected were some of the most highly lauded and decorated in the Alliance. And that was to say nothing about the ship itself; a marvel of turian and human engineering, a prototype unlike anything the galaxy had ever seen. The tech nerd in him was dying to know the ins and outs of this ship; how long it took to build, the cost of the eezo core, a thousand other points of useless, fascinating trivia.

It did not take him long to get settled. He submitted to sitrep with the Captain, a check-in with the ship's medic (the migraines had been an issue lately), and then headed to the crew quarters to get acquainted with his home for the next undetermined span of months.

"Lieutenant!" exclaimed a voice from behind him. Jenkins, he quickly realized. "Was wondering when you'd show up!"

Kaidan took his proffered hand and shook it, grinning. "Had to settle up a few things at home, first."

"Right, right. How're the folks?"

"Well enough," Kaidan said. "Ma wasn't happy about leave being cut short."

"Yeah, that's always hard. But it'll only be a few months 'til tour is over."

"That's what they say." Kaidan shrugged. "Though I won't count on anything until my feet are on solid ground again."

"You're a seasoned hand, old man," Jenkins grinned. "Teach me your ways!"

"Hey, now. Not that old."

"Yeah, sure."

Jenkins wasn't the kind of guy who fell all over himself in the name of deference and the regs with people he was familiar with. Kaidan found he envied the younger man for it, if only just a little. Even when he was younger, he'd never dreamed of speaking to a superior officer in the way Jenkins did, even off duty. Though, Jenkins meant no harm; and in fact, Kaidan had come to regard the man like one sees a younger sibling. He allowed for a little more freedom than was typical.

"Hey," Jenkins said after tossing his duffel on the bunk. "Did you hear we're getting a new XO?"

"We are?"

"Yeah! Bet you'll never guess who it is."

Kaidan looked askance at the younger man, noting the high color in his cheeks and the way he shifted from foot to foot with badly contained enthusiasm. He wracked his brain for a name that would fit the reaction and came up short. "I don't know. Who?"

"You have to guess."

"I honestly don't know!" Kaidan said, failing to inject a note of impatience in his voice. He was accustomed to Jenkins' games, and he'd be lying if he said they annoyed him.

"You are boring and sad and I don't know why I talk to you," Jenkins teased.

"Ouch."

Jenkins looked around his shoulder in a conspiratorial manner before leaning closer, his eyes bright. "It's Commander Shepard!"

"You're kidding me."

"I'm not! I heard Captain Anderson talking to Pressley about it like three minutes ago."

"We've been talking for at least five."

"You know what I mean!"

Kaidan rubbed his jaw. Commander Shepard was probably one of the most famous Alliance operatives in the galaxy. Her service record was storied and immaculate; she'd secured more commendations at age twenty-nine than a lot of men did in their entire lifetimes. She'd single-handedly fended off wave after wave of batarian slavers in the Skyllian Blitz years ago, and that wasn't counting for a thousand small victories she'd gained for the Alliance in her career.

Though the only reason he knew this much of Commander Shepard was because Jenkins had a huge crush on her. He followed her career and postings like a child follows their favorite actor or sports hero. Get him on the subject of Shepard, and he'd never shut up.

"I see why you're so excited," Kaidan finally said. "Dream come true and all, right?"

Jenkins flushed. "Shut up."

"Hey, now. It's all in good fun. You'd never met her before, right?"

Jenkins rubbed the back of his neck as they made their way to the CIC. "Yeah. I mean, I've seen the vids. And read the news bits. She's just . . . did you know her scores on the TSA are among the highest ever recorded by an Alliance operative?"

The Technical Situational Assessment was a standard part of basic training for new recruits, and it was taken after a concurrent course designed to appraise all soldiers with the standard combat suites and tech via their Omni-tools. His own score had been close to perfect; he'd never heard that Shepard had managed nearly the same. Figured that Jenkins would know, though.

"She's a biotic, too!" Jenkins was saying. "Just like you, Lieutenant."

This wasn't surprising either. Most biotics preferred to sign on with the Alliance, because it was one of the only places in the galaxy where the powers to manipulate mass and gravity weren't looked on with fear but instead seen as a useful and vital tool in combat. Hell, that had been one of the reasons he'd signed on. There are only so many years a man can take being looked at as if he's less than a person before he moves on for something better. And the Alliance had definitely been good to him.

"I guess it's your lucky day, Corporal."

"You said it! Do you think I'll get to talk to her? I mean . . . well, what would I even say? Probably something dumb. Never mind."

Kaidan smirked. "This is cute."

"Hey, shut it, will you?" Jenkins considered, brows furrowing in thought. "Maybe you could talk to her."

"Why?"

"I don't know! Put in a good word for me or make some conversation . . . or something. I don't know. She's the new XO, right? Gotta make inroads." Jenkins shook his head, his expression suddenly crestfallen. "Never mind."

"Stop moping. I'll help you out," Kaidan assured him, and he clapped him on the shoulder. "I don't know what you think'll happen though."

"Nothing will happen, Lieutenant," Jenkins said. "I know the regs. Just . . . I don't know. It's weird, getting to meet your hero."

At that moment, it struck Kaidan how young Jenkins was. This particularly sharp realization happened quite a bit when the two of them spoke, no matter the subject. It had been a long time since Kaidan had known the same wide-eyed enthusiasm and naiveté as Jenkins, the same awkwardness and zeal. Even when he was a teenager, Kaidan had always been old in his heart. Principled, logical. Controlled. Especially after BAaT.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Kaidan assured him.

"Yes, sir!" Jenkins offered him a stiff and exacting salute, though it reminded Kaidan quite a bit of a puppy struggling to obey the commands of its master despite its enthusiasm.

They set about their duties in the CIC without any more conversation, giving Kaidan the chance to file his pre-launch report and calibrate his Omni-tool to ping his schedule for the first few days. He didn't exactly need the reminders (one basic officer had commented that he had a mind like a steel trap), but he liked imposing a bit of order when he could. One of the reasons military life suited him especially well. As a civilian, he'd be called obsessive. Here, he was praised for it.

In hindsight, he'd pull this moment apart and examine it for its minute details until the pieces no longer made sense on their own. He'd study it from as many angles as he could – the first words she said, the way her hair curled against her neck, her eyes. It was sadly necessary, because in the actual, breaking moment, he blanked. He choked like a tenderfoot sighting down the barrel of their first target.

Commander Shepard strode through the airlock of the Normandy as if she was certain of every single step beneath her feet. She was confident and assured, but not cold; he quickly detected a hint of kindness and humor in her eyes, the slight upward curve of her mouth. She was slim and lean, her shape subtle as a knife. He'd be a liar of the worst kind if he didn't admit that his eyes lingered on the contour of her breasts swelling against her uniform and the gentle flaring of her hips for the briefest second before flickering back up to her face. But he could see immediately that there was sharpness to her, and skill.

"Shit," he heard Jenkins breathe beside him.

Kaidan blinked quickly to reorient herself. "What?"

"She's even more gorgeous in person."

"She's your commanding officer." It took him a moment to realize the rebuke was aimed more at himself than the errant Corporal.

"Ah . . . yes, sir."

Commander Shepard saluted Anderson with exacting precision, and he returned the salute with a little more ease before shaking her hand enthusiastically. He'd never seen the Captain show much of a reaction to anyone, but he could already tell that Shepard brought out the strange, hidden places in a person just through the inexplicable merit of her presence.

Kaidan hoped that she'd pass the two of them by in favor of some other crewmen, giving him the chance to escape and compose himself, but that hope was for nothing. When she caught Kaidan's eye, she broke into a friendly smile and he felt his heart sputter to a pathetic stop for a breathless, shuddering second. Struggling for an appropriate action, he finally decided on a formal salute, and Jenkins followed suit.

"Welcome aboard the Normandy, Commander," he said stiffly.

"Thank you," she returned. "Your name is . . .?"

Kaidan cleared his throat and struggled to speak with a tongue that felt heavy as lead. "Lieutenant Alenko, ma'am."

"Do you have a first name, Lieutenant?" she asked, and it struck him that her grin had become a bit teasing.

He prayed that she wouldn't notice his embarrassment. "Ah—Kaidan, ma'am."

"Kaidan. It's nice to meet you, Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko."

And somehow, he knew that she meant it. "Likewise, ma'am."

"And you are?" she prompted to Jenkins, who was still staring at her with mouth hanging open like a fish gasping for breath.

It didn't talk Jenkins half as long to collect himself. "Corporal Richard Jenkins, ma'am!" he said promptly, and Kaidan fumed. Figured he'd learn from Kaidan's stupid mistake. "And you're Commander Shepard," Jenkins breathed after a moment. Kaidan recognized that look in Jenkins' eye far better than Shepard would have, but by the time he'd opened his mouth it was far too late; Jenkins was talking so much it was as if he feared the silence. He didn't even pause for breath. "I heard all about the Blitz, ma'am! And the batarian slavers! How you held them off for hours until reinforcements came, and even though you were badly wounded you never gave up ground; you didn't let them take the colony! And I saw the vids of you getting the Star of Terra live! You were –"

"Hold on, Corporal. I think there's been a mistake," Shepard cut in.

Jenkins was too stunned to deflate. "What?"

"Yeah, definitely a mistake. See, I didn't do those things; Commander Ham Snepard did. It's a pretty common mix up; don't blame you for making it. But I can't just stand by and let that man's accomplishments be hung on an undeserving neck."

"O-oh," Jenkins said. "I'm so sorry."

She leaned close. "I'll let it slide this time, Corporal. Carry on."

Kaidan covered his mouth with his hand in order to hide the traitorous grin pulling at his lips. He wouldn't dare laugh in front of the Commander as if they were friends, but she caught his amusement anyway, despite his efforts. When he met her gaze, he felt as if they shared an unspoken moment of understanding and – dare he even think it? – camaraderie. Her eyes were bright with laughter, and that slamming realization hit him once again; she was beautiful, and what was more, fascinating. He wanted to seek her out and learn everything there was to know about her, every preference, every desire.

It was shocking and forbidden and against so many regulations that he'd be thinking about it for hours if he outlined every single one of them, but he could no more deny that sudden desire than he could deny the beating of his own heart.

This was the first beginning- this moment right there. It was partly her stunning beauty, partly the stupid joke, and partly her subtle discomfort, evident in the way she chewed the inside of her cheek, as if uncomfortable with accolades and praise.

And Kaidan knew instantly that this woman would be an unmistakable and unmovable feature on the landscape of his life. He knew it in the way you know a storm is coming, the thick air clinging to skin, the rumbling on the horizon. She would be as vital as the air he breathed.


	2. Chapter 2

Jenkins mourned his first disastrous interaction with the Commander for the rest of the day. He wasn't obnoxious about it, and even if he had been Kaidan wouldn't have blamed him in the least. His head still spun and he felt slightly punch-drunk, unsteady on his feet. There was a ringing in his ears – though that could just as easily have been the onset of another migraine.

"God, I sounded like a total idiot!" Jenkins groaned, taking off his cap and running his hands over his head. "Goddammit."

"Come on," Kaidan assured him. "I'm pretty sure she was teasing you."

"Yeah, and that's the worst part! I was just . . . going on and on like some moony kid. She must have thought I was so stupid."

"Actually, I think all that praise made her uncomfortable."

Jenkins paused in his ritual of self-loathing. "What?"

Kaidan immediately regretted opening his mouth. What did he know about Shepard? He'd met her only a few minutes ago. "I don't know. She just seemed like she was trying to break the tension with a joke."

"But why?" Jenkins wondered. "I mean . . . she did do all those things. Right?"

"Yeah, but . . . I don't know." Kaidan cleared his throat. "Forget about it."

"Sure, Lieutenant."

He was saved by Captain Anderson, his deep voice coming through the intercom. " _All personnel, man your posts. Prepare for launch."_

Jenkins promptly saluted and headed aft, though Kaidan did not miss the disconsolate cast to his features. He shared this particular brand of self-deprecating misery; he hadn't fawned, exactly, but it seemed like she'd had a private joke at his expense anyway, subtly poking fun at his decorum. Not that decorum was a bad thing. He had the sense that she'd never grown accustomed to people finding her outstanding, and that she liked to poke holes in it when she could. What he didn't know was why he found it so endearing.

With a determined huff, he made his way to the bridge to resume his post. He made his hands busy, the better to ignore these unwanted thoughts.

~

Commander Shepard swiped the sweaty hair off the back of her neck and examined her reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying in vain to control her ragged breathing. Her lips pursed, eyebrows furrowing trenches in otherwise unblemished skin. People said she looked like her late mother, Hannah Shepard, but she didn't see it. Her mother had been beautiful and tough as steel. Shepard was just tough. Like gristle.

She ran a thumb over the scar on the bridge of her nose, tracing its path over her cheek. It was a souvenir of the Blitz, years ago, when a batarian slaver had cracked her across the face with the butt of his assault rifle. She'd retaliated in kind before shooting him between his four eyes and dispatching the rest of his unit with similar efficiency. She had been spent, her breath scraping out of raw lungs, a bead of sweat sliding down the trench of her spine, the slightest tremor burrowing in her hands, where it would remain for the rest of her life. 

She cupped her hands under the flow of the water and splashed her face. That almost imperceptible tremor unsteadied her hands, but she took a series of cool, slow breaths and eventually they calmed.

She was nervous. She was always nervous when meeting a new crew. Of course she didn't show it – how could she? Commander Shepard the hero, Commander Shepard the celebrity. There was always one over-eager soldier dying to ply her into regaling them all with a personal account of her heroics; it never seemed to occur to them that these were memories she preferred to leave behind. The Blitz was regarded as one of the most impressive accomplishments of a single soldier in years, but it hadn't been a perfect victory. Many of the men she served with had died. She'd held a singular breach in the defenses for almost forty-eight hours, surrounded by their corpses, deafened by the silence.

Wiping her face with the back of her hand, she straightened her uniform and stepped back out into the CIC. Beneath her feet she could feel the engine rumbling, increasing in pitch as they launched through the Earth's atmosphere and into the void beyond. This was familiar enough; she'd lived her whole life on frigates. Maybe not quite like this one – being a prototype and all – but close enough. As a child of military, she'd learned to take comfort in small and familiar things. They were all you had when your home could change at a moment's notice.

The Normandy made excellent time through the Sol system, passing Mars and Jupiter in minutes. She strode through the CIC in the direction of the bridge, weaving through the busy crewmen and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Most of them were too set on their duties to give her much notice, but the Corporal from before offered her a hurried salute before scurrying away.

Maybe the stupid joke had been in poor taste. She had just been so tired of the routine; new posting, the inevitable fan club that dogged her steps. She'd wanted to engage them all as soldiers – an XO to their subordinates, or even better, as comrades. Not a hero to worshipers.

She edged around the turian Spectre and stood behind the pilots – Flight Lieutenant Moreau, she quickly recalled, and the handsome lieutenant from earlier. Without conscious decision, her gaze lingered on him. Tall, finely muscled, with dark hair and dark eyes. She studied the back of his neck, noting the scars from his biotic implant just at the bottom of his hairline. His eyes drifted toward her for one brief moment before darting away.

She probably made him nervous; that was it. Her service record tended to intimidate career men, since she'd managed to accomplish much more than most through a combination of deadly skill, savvy, and pure stupid luck. It was a little surprising to realize that she didn't want to intimidate this man, this essential stranger. Something about him was a little strange and fascinating, and she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

Shepard watched the pilot's hands move over his console, much more assuredly than she'd ever manage. There had been a lot of rumors surrounding Jeff 'Joker' Moreau, but Shepard immediately saw that claims to his skill were not exaggerated. He took them through the relay without so much as a jolt or shudder otherwise.

"Decent," the turian commented absently. "Less than 1500k drift."

It was more than decent and everyone on the bridge knew it. But Joker didn't say anything until the turian had strode from the bridge to the comm room before he snarled over his console. "What an asshole."

"He just complimented you," Kaidan pointed out.

"'Decent' is not a compliment." Joker insisted. "'Decent' is patronizing. That guy is a dick."

"He's a Spectre," Kaidan said, as if this explained it.

"Does this 'dick' have a name?" Shepard interrupted.

They both started and turned to look around at her with slightly stunned expressions, and she felt herself falter a little. Maybe she shouldn't have said 'dick'. No – she was the Commander. She'd earned the right to say what she wanted.

"Nihlus," Kaidan finally said after he cleared his throat. "It's Nihlus."

"He been with you long?" Shepard asked.

"We picked him up on Arcturus before we came in for leave," Joker cut in. "He had some things to do on Earth, supposedly." Joker's face scrunched in obvious dislike. "This whole thing stinks to hell, Commander. Ma'am. I don't like it."

"You don't like anything," Kaidan said, biting his lip to suppress a smile. His very beautiful lip. She looked away.

"Yeah, and?"

"Nothing, nothing. It's just that you not liking this situation doesn't really mean anything if you don't like any situation. There's no precedent."

Joker scowled. "Take your logic somewhere else, Alenko. We don't need it 'round these parts."

"Clearly."

"Nihlus say why he's coming along now?" Shepard cut in before the argument could get out of hand.

"Supposedly it's a shakedown. And I guess the Council wants to see its hard earned credits haven't gone to waste," Joker said, waving a hand dismissively. "That's the official story, anyway."

"You don't like the official story?"

"Suckers like the official story," Joker said. "I'm no sucker."

"Right," Kaidan snorted.

"Well, he's got a point," Shepard said thoughtfully. "They don't send Spectres on simple shakedown cruises."

"The Commander gets it," Joker said appreciatively.

"I still think you're paranoid," Kaidan said with a sideways look toward Shepard. "It's smart to keep an eye on your investment. And I'd say this ship is a pretty big investment. The specs alone ..."

"We'll see soon enough, I'm sure," Shepard said, grinning. She felt more relaxed than she had in a long time, due in no small part to Kaidan. She could see that he was logical and even-handed, not prone to suspicion or overreaction. She could see that he was kind and a little funny, evident in the ease in which he interacted with his crewmates. She was curious about him; that was all. He was interesting and handsome, and there was a quality to him that she couldn't exactly place, an old soul, wounded beyond its time.

" _Joker, send the Commander to the comm room,"_ said Anderson over the intercom. " _Immediately."_

"Uh, yes sir. Hey – maybe keep an eye out for our turian friend?" Joker said, attempting levity.

Anderson was not amused. " _He's already here."_ The intercom clicked off with an air of irritation.

"Fantastic," Shepard groused good-naturedly. "Maybe next time try not to piss off the Captain before my briefings?"

"No promises," Joker said. "Hey uh, nice meeting you, Commander. Never thought I'd ever know such a big war hero and all. Maybe we can swap stories or something."

Here it was – the inescapable entreaties for her victories and losses. Maybe they thought she was strange, or they wanted to understand what had driven her to success in such an impossible situation. But without fail, the mention sent a shiver of anxiety running through her. She clamped down hard on the inside of her cheek, searching dumbly for some kind of humorous deflection that would make the situation go away.

But before she could, Kaidan spoke up. "I'd say the Commanders stories are all easily accessed via the extranet. At least, the ones you need to know about," he said lightly, though Shepard heard a definite edge in his tone. He was speaking on her behalf, she realized, and she was suddenly so desperately grateful she could have kissed him.

"The Lieutenant's right," Shepard said. "I'd say my career is pretty common knowledge."

"Oh – right. Of course. Just thought you'd like to share. Most hero types do," Joker said, and he rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. "No offense."

"None taken," Shepard said, and she made her voice warm. Those questions never were malicious, and she'd since learned to stop taking them as an attack. "Carry on."

The two of them muttered their respectful salutes, but before she turned on her heel toward the comm room, she caught Kaidan's gaze once again. He was watching her with something close to solicitude - as if he understood the need to keep some things buried and unspoken – but there was another edge to it too; a kind of appreciation, maybe. It resonated on a visceral level, in a way Shepard had never felt before.

She strode out of the bridge with her back straight, keeping her balled fists at her side to keep from trembling. That old tremor, betraying her. 

~

Commander Shepard wasn't gone long before the order came in to gear up and wait for deployment. The Normandy had received a distress signal from Eden Prime, one of the more successful human colonies in the Traverse, and the official directive was to secure the colony and a Prothean beacon that had been excavated earlier. It was whispered that this was just a chance to put the new stealth systems through its paces, but Kaidan had an odd feeling.

Jenkins could hardly contain his glee. "I've been waiting for a real assignment for ages," he enthused, stumbling a bit as he latched into his greaves.

"Only a few months," Kaidan corrected. "Not ages."

"You know what I mean!"

"I don't when you throw around misleading hyperbole."

Jenkins fumed. "Anyone ever tell you that you're a stickler?"

"I like to be clear; what's the harm in that?"

"Yeah, yeah. Fine. I've been waiting for a real assignment for  _months."_ Jenkins shot him a look. "Happy?"

"Ecstatic."

Jenkins latched into his chestplate. "We're going to get to see Shepard in action," he whispered, though he barely contained his excitement. "Can you believe it?"

"This is the best day of your life, isn't it?"

Jenkins held a dramatic hand to his heart. "Not only did I meet my beautiful, sexy, tough-as-nails hero, I'm going to serve under her direct command on the field. I can now die a happy man."

"Lucky you. Some of us never get there," Kaidan said, grinning.

"Have faith, Alenko. Have a little faith."

"Whatever you say."

"And after that, we're headed to the Citadel! You ever been?"

"No, actually."

"Me either. Figures my first assignment would be on my home, but the Citadel will more than make up for it. You know there's a ward arm for every major race in the galaxy?"

"Must be pretty crowded."

"But interesting! Don't you think?"

"Yeah," Kaidan said, smiling a bit. He was so young – early twenties – but even at his age, Kaidan hadn't known that same wide-eyed joy and excitement for life. He'd already been hardened, and more than a little bitter; the perils of growing up a biotic.

He heard the sound of approaching footsteps and turned just in time to see Shepard open her locker, removing the pieces of her hardsuit. She smiled at the both of them politely, though Kaidan thought her gaze lingered on him for just a moment. No, it couldn't have been; he was imagining things again.

"Any of you been to Eden Prime before?" she asked, a kind attempt at making conversation.

"I grew up here, ma'am," Jenkins said quickly, desperate to please. "Hope nothing too bad went down here."

"You have family here?"

"Yeah, but not on this continent. Thankfully."

Shepard let out a small sigh as she strapped on her boots. "Yeah, you said it. One less thing to think about, you know?"

Jenkins nodded, still at a loss. He seemed to attempt to contain his enthusiasm for half a moment before losing the battle spectacularly. "I just wanted you to know that it's a real honor to serve under you, ma'am!" he said, snapping into a prompt salute. "A real honor!"

"We hardly know each other, Jenkins," Shepard said, and it struck Kaidan that her grin was decidedly sly. "I think I'll need a bit more time before I'll let you do anything under me. Some flowers at the very least."

Kaidan snorted, covering his mouth to contain the obnoxious laughter that longed to burst free. Jenkins, for his part, went white as a ghost before turning a bit green around the gills. "N-no, I didn't mean-"

"I know," Shepard said kindly. "And seriously? You won't be serving 'under me'. No one serves under me. You'll be serving with me. I hope you know the difference."

"Yes, ma'am!" Jenkins said, and his relief radiated from every pore; he snapped into another salute as if to seal this understanding. Kaidan watched her gaze drift to his for a small moment before darting away, and it struck him that her expression had suddenly become a bit self-conscious, evident in the slight twitch of her lips. It wasn't the way officers did things, the chain of command was paramount. But he couldn't bring himself to disapprove. 

"Come on, you two," she said, strapping into her hardsuit chestplate and attaching her guns with quick and decisive motions. "Time to move."


	3. Chapter 3

Supposedly, Eden Prime was one of humanity's most successful colonies. It was verdant and peaceful, with multiple settlements spanning across the moderately populated continents. Some research was being conducted here as well, adding a significant population of scientists and technicians to the farmers and other agrarian workers. Kaidan had never been here before, but he'd heard quite a bit about it.

He never expected to see Eden Prime like this. Burning homes, the stench of death thick on the air. Flakes of ash drifted lazily down, settling on his shoulders like snow. The name conjured up images of a paradise; perhaps because of that it was impossible to think of the colony susceptible to death and danger. A foolish mistake; one the people here had paid for.

"My god," Jenkins breathed. He sounded sick.

"Stay focused," Shepard warned, but he heard a similar trembling on the edge of her tone, mirroring a tremor in her hands. "We're here for the beacon."

"Yes, ma'am," Jenkins echoed, but Kaidan saw his stricken expression as his eyes roved over the burned-out ruins. This wasn't at all what he'd had in mind for his first assignment. Kaidan knew he pictured it the way a young child does – running in to save the day, guns blazing. Jenkins hadn't realized yet that most if not all assignments were like this. He didn't know yet that he'd become horribly intimate with the smell of the dead.

Kaidan watched Shepard as she moved through the smoking wreckage, her steps crunching on burned grass. She was three years younger than him, but he could easily see why she'd risen so high so quickly in her career. She was assured – the weapon in her hands was as familiar as a second skin. She kept a constant survey of her surroundings, her eyes sharp as a blade. He could see that those sharp eyes missed nothing – not the blast-scoring on the buildings, the charred corpses, the red haze of the sky.

It was completely inappropriate to find her beautiful at this moment. That didn't stop the thought, though; sliding through his thoughts almost tauntingly, delighted with itself. He scowled and shook it away.

"Jenkins, take point," Shepard ordered, gesturing with the mouth of her gun.

He was quick to obey. Kaidan watched the younger man, struck by the realization of how green he truly way. He'd set something up on the Normandy when they got back, Kaidan decided. A drink or a game of cards, or something. Some kind of pick-me-up. It was clear that the younger man would need it.

Maybe he could ask Shepard to say something encouraging. Though, if she was anything liked he'd seen so far, she'd likely do just that without needing to be asked.

He heard something at the edge of his awareness and snapped around toward the source of the noise, his biotics flaring defensively. Shepard saw it too, but Jenkins was still unaware, eyes still roaming over the destruction—

It happened too quickly. One moment everything was as it should be, and the next a cluster of drones had crested the hill and opened fire. Shepard rolled quickly out of the way and Kaidan threw up a barrier before the shots could hit him, but Jenkins was caught unaware.

The drones lit him up like a Christmas tree.

"No!" Shepard shouted, and he realized belatedly that he had shouted the same; a furious echo. A snarl, shaking hands; they pounded the drones with biotics and perfectly aimed shots, splattering them before they could retaliate. He fell into quick, familiar rote -- lit the biotics, aimed his pistol with a steady eye, sighting down the drones before furiously destroying them. It was relatively quiet again, but this time the silence was that of absence, of a void.

Shepard rushed forward to Jenkins' side and groped desperately for a pulse, but Kaidan knew instantly that he was dead. One shot had cracked through his visor and struck him high between the eyes. There wasn't any coming back from that.

"He's dead, Commander," he heard himself say in a horrible, distant voice. Bile burned at the back of his throat.

"Goddammit," she hissed brokenly. "Goddammit."

He didn't know what to say to that.

The tremor in her hands was back, and this time she wasn't able to push it down. She folded Jenkins' hands over his chest and got to her feet, and the icy mask of sharp calm was back. She cleared her throat. "Form up on me, Lieutenant," she told him in a hard voice.

"Aye, ma'am."

They did not speak again. What more was there to say? That it was disgusting such a young man should die in a senseless and stupid manner? That it wasn't their fault, but it sure as hell felt like it was? Their stupid jokes from only hours earlier came back to him – the memory of him saying now that he'd met Shepard and gotten the chance to serve with her, he could die a happy man. Was it that the unknowable forces of the universe took those words as a challenge?

He felt sick. There was a ragged anger building in him, unspoken but impossible to ignore. He pushed it down but it didn't disappear. He knew it would stay there.

Something struck Kaidan then – what had attacked them looked disconcertingly like geth technology, but that didn't make any sense. This kind of attack was not their style; for the most part, they were cagey and kept to themselves.

"Did you recognize those drones?" he asked her, trying to push the sick guilt and grief out of his mind. It was fine to mourn later, but not on the field. Not in the middle of a hell-hole.

"They looked geth to me," Shepard said unwillingly. "Pretty weird to see them outside of the Veil, though."

"That's what I thought."

She sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her left hand. "Keep your eyes open," she told him, and he got the sense that she was nervous when she looked at him, as if afraid something would happen. He could say honestly that he felt the same fear.

In the distance, the rattle of gunfire ripped through the silence, and Shepard held up a hand, signaling for him to hold. He scanned the horizon, shading his eyes with his hand, and after a moment he saw a small figure running desperately for cover. Shepard picked up and took off in the direction of the figure, who he quickly realized was being pursued by geth.

He leapt into action; with pure focus, he lit the biotics in his flesh and smashed a warp into the nearest one, crushing it against a stone face. Shepard fired a pulse from her Omni-tool and the resulting overload flashed so brightly that he could only see dark spots at first, blooming where his surroundings once were.

It was over as quickly as it had begun, and Kaidan found himself appreciating Shepard's lightning-fast reaction time. She jogged toward the figure – an armored woman. She was bent at the waist, clutching a hissing rifle between her hands and gasping for breath. "You all right, soldier?" Shepard asked. "No wounds?"

"No, ma'am," the woman replied quickly. "My shields are fried to hell, but they didn't get me."

"You've got a bit of luck following you around, don't you?"

The woman's lips pulled together. "Not enough, ma'am."

"Right. Do you have a name?"

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the 212." The woman offered a tired salute.

"Commander Shepard, and this is Lieutenant Alenko of the Normandy. We're responding to your distress signal." Shepard looked around, checking the perimeter before turning back to the Chief. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Pretty much what you saw, ma'am," Ashley said, gesturing with her still-hissing rifle. "Some of the techs uncovered the beacon earlier, and when we were trying to secure it, this giant ship touches down. Next thing we know, geth are pouring in the settlement, wrecking shi- I mean, wrecking things, killing people. Ma'am." Ashley swallowed. "They got my whole unit."

"I'm sorry we didn't get here sooner," Shepard said quietly. "Do you remember where the beacon is?"

"Yeah. Just over that a ways. I can take you."

"We'd appreciate it."

Ashley's gaze darted from Shepard to Kaidan and back again. "Just the two of you, then?"

"There's a Spectre running around, somewhere," Kaidan offered.

"'Prefers to work alone' he said," Shepard added.

"Spectre, huh?" It occurred to Kaidan that Ashley's tone was sour. "Figures. Come on."

She led them through the desiccated settlement without even a backward glance. He could imagine what went through her mind – how shitty it was to lose your entire unit, to be the sole survivor and bear the weight of their combined deaths on your shoulders. He knew a similar memory. Quite a few similar memories, actually. They didn't get any easier.

They ran into a few geth units and made quick work of them, though it struck Kaidan as odd. "Strange we're not running into more resistance," he said, frowning.

"I was just thinking the same thing," Shepard said.

"They've done their damage," Williams cut in. "Probably trying to retreat, now."

"Yeah," Shepard said, though she didn't look convinced.

Williams guided them through the wreckage before coming to a stop in front of a dig site, her expression pinched. "The beacon was here earlier. They hadn't moved it to the port yet."

"Maybe the geth got a hold of it?" Kaidan said.

"Shit," Shepard cursed. "How far away is the port?"

"Few minutes due east. You think your Spectre friend might have found it?" Ashley asked.

"He would have radioed in," Shepard told her, frowning. "He should have radioed a long time ago, come to think of it."

Kaidan rubbed the back of his neck. "You think something happened?"

"I don't know. I have a weird feeling," she said slowly, watching a bit of ash drift down onto her gauntlet. "Take us to the port, Williams. We need to get this beacon."

"Aye, ma'am."

The beginnings of a migraine throbbed in his temples, just under his eyes, and he swallowed a thick wave of nausea. Not now, he thought angrily. Not when he needed to be alert and focused, not when there was the constant threat of another attack, another group of geth drones, ripping through her shields, piercing high through her head-

He angrily shoved those thoughts away, too.

"Look!" Shepard's voice cut through his focus, high with distress. In front of them was a turian figure, crumpled on the ground like a broken toy. The crates behind him were splattered with chunks of grey matter and blue blood, glistening weirdly in the strange red haze.

"This your friend?" Ashley wondered, nudging Nihlus' leg with her toe.

"Yes." Shepard's sigh was heavy. "Shit."

"Think the geth got him?"

"It would seem that way," Shepard said, rubbing her brow with the back of her hand. "Goddammit."

They'd been about to move on when a faint sound broke through the silence; a small gasp through clenched teeth, followed by a whimper. The three of them leveled their guns toward the sound of the disturbance in the span of half a second, and when Shepard spoke again, her voice was cool. "Show yourself," she ordered. "Now."

A small man rose from behind the crates, his face drawn with fear. His lips were white. "Don't shoot," he begged. "Please. I didn't do nothing."

"That's pretty clear," Shepard said, and her lips twisted. It was quickly obvious what had happened; this man had hid behind the crates while his fellows died. No need to even ask. "Did you see what happened?" she pushed ahead.

The man nodded, suddenly eager to help. "The dead one was poking around, looking for something. Another turian comes up and greets him, and the dead one is surprised to see him. I think he knew him though – he turns his back to keep looking around. While he was distracted, the other one shot him in the head. Killed him, the backstabber. I saw the whole thing."

Shepard frowned for a moment, considering. "Did he use a name?" she finally asked.

"Yeah. Saren, or something. I thought they were friends, 'til he shot him. I was going to step out and ask for help when I saw him draw his gun."

"Christ," Shepard muttered. "Which way did he go?"

"Toward the port. Had some synthetic friends following him around."

"The geth," Kaidan supplied.

"Right . . . the geth. Didn't think the geth would work for real people." The man fidgeted. "Can I go now?"

Shepard's mouth curled in dislike. "Yeah. Get the hell out of here."

The man didn't wait for another second; he scurried off in the direction that they had come, correctly assuming that they'd killed whatever resistance there was in that area. Shepard didn't even turn to watch him go; she set out in the direction of the port, moving so quickly that he and Ashley had to struggle to keep pace with her.

"What a stinking coward," Ashley muttered as they went. "Hiding while we get our asses shot off."

"Try not to think about it," Shepard said shortly. "We've got to find that beacon."

Kaidan was starting to appreciate her businesslike efficiency on the field. It was better to descend completely into the task at hand, and leave no room for worrying or speculation, anger or grief. It was better to exist in an airless place where there were objectives and goals, and the logical movements toward those goals.

He saw another shudder ripple through her hands, and she clenched them tightly over the barrel of her gun to still them. Her gaze drifted to his, but before he could look away - out of respect, or perhaps dismay at being caught - he saw her color slightly, her lips curving downward in plain anger. And even though the mission had gone to hell spectacularly and a close friend lay dead in a ditch somewhere behind them, he couldn't help finding her beautiful at that moment.

He was disgusting. Disrespectful, out of line, corrupt. Why not dance on the graves of the dead while he was at it?

A subtle rumbling sounded in the distance, quickly rising in pitch until it rattled in his aching skull, jostling the ground under their feet. And on the horizon, he saw it; a massive ship slowly rising into the sky before disappearing. The audible activation of its FTL felt like a cannon blast, nearly knocking them all to the ground.

"What the hell was that?" Shepard shouted.

"That's the ship from earlier," Ashley answered quickly. "What if the beacon-?"

"Come on!" Shepard interrupted her, sprinting toward the port tramway, almost too quickly to be pursued.

When someone dangled a goal in front of Shepard, she pursued it with single-minded determination. She cut through wave after wave of geth, frying their guns and overloading their systems with stunning ease. He normally acquitted himself pretty well on the field, but he could not help but to be distracted by her – the obvious skill, the assurance in her abilities, her deadly efficiency. He couldn't help but to respect and even admire it. His already inappropriate reaction to the Commander was quickly growing outside of his ability to control.

He'd always believed his capacity for control was remarkable. Not so much, now.

When they finally made it to the beacon, he saw the tightness in Shepard's shoulders relax, and she let out a terse breath, holstering her pistol. "The geth didn't take the beacon," she mused aloud, craning toward the sky where the ship had once been. "I wonder why?"

"Does it matter?" Ashley said. "We've got it now. Ma'am," she added quickly as an afterthought.

"Right," Shepard said, though she did not seem placated. She activated her radio, pacing in tight circles. "Normandy? All hostiles terminated. Prepare pickup for the beacon and – and two bodies."

He didn't miss the way her voice trembled on the word, the tremor running up her hands once again. He looked away.

"Look at that thing," Ashley said. "Lot of trouble for a hunk of rock."

"More than that," he argued distractedly, moving a little closer. "Was it activated when you uncovered it?"

Ashley shrugged. "I wasn't around when they dug it up."

"Huh." He moved closer, oddly transfixed by the sleekness of the beacon, the glowing lines running up its polished face. He was curious, naturally; he'd never had the chance to examine Prothean technology before, and it had always been a source of interest for him. The Protheans had been the rulers of the galaxy when they'd mysteriously disappeared over fifty thousand years ago, and it always created a scene when a new artifact was uncovered. The unspoken questions were always there – maybe this time, they'd learn what killed them off. Maybe this time they'd understand.

He wasn't so cold that he thought the knowledge they'd discover with this beacon was worth it, but at least they hadn't failed on this count. They'd set out to secure the beacon, and they had done so. Mission accomplished.

Suddenly, the beacon pulsed and before he could jump out of the way, he felt himself being dragged closer, powerful as a mass effect. There was a pounding in his skull, thick and loud, mixing horrifically with his migraine. He struggled against the pull but it was inescapable; his boots scrabbled against the platform, his spine bowing. He couldn't gain enough purchase to retreat. _This is it,_ an odd voice echoed in his mind. _This is how you die._

"Kaidan!" he heard from behind him, and then suddenly there was an opposing force of equal strength, this one wrapped around his waist. He felt her struggling against the inexorable pull of the beacon, and with a grunt of effort Shepard threw him aside with so much force that he sprawled nearly five meters away.

He was free, but now she was caught in the beacon's pull. "Shepard!" he shouted. He struggled to his feet to rush after her, but Ashley held him back with much more strength than he expected.

"No! Don't touch her! You don't know what will happen!" she shouted over the buzzing of the beacon, suddenly so loud that it cut the still silence of Eden Prime, even louder than the enormous ship that held fled minutes ago.

Furious and terrified, he watched as the beacon Shepard pulled off her feet, transfixed with her limbs splayed apart, as if she were a bug pinned to a board in a collection. He heard a garbled scream rattling in her throat, her teeth audibly grinding as the beacon ravaged her. He watched her fists clench so tightly that her knuckles popped. She shuddered and seized, her head lolling back, her eyes rolling deep into her skull. There was an explosion and the beacon hurled her away, sending her skidding into a pile of crates.

For one brief, terrifying second, he thought she was dead. But before he could react to this horrible thought, he saw her seizing, her limbs jerking as if she was being electrocuted. A deluge of blood streamed from her nose, pouring down her chin and pooling in the hollow at her neck.

He was at her side before consciously deciding to move. "Shepard!" he said, holding her flailing limbs down. "Oh my god."

He was aware of Ashley shouting into her radio for immediate assistance, but the words didn't properly register. All he could do was look down on her bloody face, into the whites of her eyes, and attempt to keep her from hurting herself. All he could do was acknowledge the slamming, sick realization that his curiosity had killed this amazing woman.

His carelessness had destroyed her.


	4. Chapter 4

Shepard's unconsciousness was not a place of tranquility. She was tormented by roiling visions she didn't understand: the stench of death, corpses of a species she'd never seen before strewn over many wide places, the feel of ash on the air, and the constant, ever-present thudding of a feedback scream, shuddering in her bones, rattling her skull.

For the formless span of time she was submerged by these visions, she thought she had died. She thought she burned in an afterlife designed for people like her who believed in nothing. What a grotesque irony, the unaffected part of her mind mused. What an appropriate hell.

When she woke, it was what she imagined coming back from the dead must be like. She felt as if this was the first time she'd opened her eyes in many years, evident from the way the low light of the med bay hurt her eyes, sending a stunning wave of pain throbbing in her skull. She couldn't clamp down on the gasp that came through her teeth fast enough.

"Dr. Chakwas!" she heard a beautiful voice say; unfamiliar and yet known somehow. After what felt like years of listening to the screaming of the dead, she wanted this voice to keep speaking. "She's waking up."

There was a flurry of movement and she saw the ship's doctor lean over her bed, celery-colored eyes hooded with concern. "Easy, Commander," she said. "Slowly."

Shepard struggled to sit up. "The beacon!" she tried to say through the haze of pain. "Kaidan—"

"-is fine. Please, Commander. You'll hurt yourself." The doctor's voice was firm.

She sank back into the pillows and closed her eyes. The visions were fading – pale memories through a haze instead of stark as blood on the walls – and it was easier to think. To remember. "What happened?" she whispered. Her voice was hoarse.

She heard someone clear their throat beside her, and it stunned her to realize it was Kaidan. He was leaning on the bed next to her, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked up at her with an expression of such potent misery that it registered as physical pain to Shepard, and she had to avert her gaze. "I – the beacon activated and started pulling me toward it. You threw me out of the way, but – but it got you instead. I'm sorry," he said in a hush.

He'd obviously rehearsed this speech; she saw it all over him, agonizing guilt etched like lines in his face. It stunned her that he should feel so strongly over what happened for a woman that he hardly knew, for a Commander that had failed him so spectacularly. "It's fine," she said, attempting a dorky grin. "I'm alive, aren't I? You couldn't have known what would happen."

And though he was tired and probably still miserable, he gave her a small smile. She noticed a few fine scars around his lips.

"How long was I out?" she asked Dr. Chakwas, rubbing her temple.

"Over a standard day," the doctor said as she checked Shepard's vitals. "It's quite a relief to see you'll pull through, Commander. Especially after . . . well, after the beacon was destroyed." Everyone in the room knew that hadn't been what Chakwas was going to say, but she preferred that failure remain unspoken for now. She would have to face it soon, but not yet.

She struggled to swing her legs over the side of the bed when Chakwas stopped her. "Not so fast Commander," she said sternly. "I'm keeping you here for observation for another day."

"Doctor, really, I'm fine—"

"I would rather be safe than sorry," Chakwas said primly. "Indulge me, Commander."

"I have a lot to catch up on," Shepard argued. "If I've been out for a day, my duties—"

"—can wait. Please, Commander. I think we would all rather not have to bury another one of our own so soon."

Whatever retort Shepard had been planning died in her throat. If Chakwas wanted to play with guilt, she'd earned her victory the dirty way. Defeated and upset, Shepard slumped back into the pillows. "If you insist."

"I do."

Chakwas bustled away and slipped through the doorway to her office, leaving Shepard alone with Kaidan. He seemed to realize the situation after a few moments for he slowly pushed away from the bed, shooting her another contrite look.

It was partly the prospect of lying in the med bay with nothing to occupy her thoughts aside from the terrifying visions that churned in her memory, and partly the ridiculous amount of guilt that positively radiated from Kaidan like heat. Whatever it was, it prompted her to level the question at him as if it were a projectile and not an entreaty. "Mind keeping me company for a bit, Lieutenant?" She nearly choked on the words. "That is if you don't have any other duties to take care of."

He paused, stunned. "I – yes, ma'am. I mean – I mean no, ma'am. I don't have anything."

"Have a seat," she gestured, grinning a little at his expression. "I'm not going to yell at you."

"I wouldn't blame you if you did," he said honestly.

"Why? We could sit here and talk for hours how that mission went FUBAR on my account, and I don't seem to recall you making any of those same mistakes."

Kaidan shook his head. "You did everything right, ma'am. It was just . . . it was just a mess."

"I didn't do everything right," she argued. "For example, I had no business putting a tenderfoot like Jenkins on point, especially considering how distracted he was by the situation. I should have tailed Nihlus – it was a stupid decision to split up. I should have –"

"All due respect, ma'am, if we'd been with Nihlus, we'd probably have been killed too. And as for Jenkins . . ." Kaidan trailed off, frowning deeply. "It was just bad luck."

She let out a breath. "Bad luck," she echoed. She didn't know if she believed him, and she didn't know if he was just saying it out of some misguided sense of respect for his superior officer, but she appreciated that he was trying. "God," she sighed, feeling her hands tremble on her lap. "I . . . I hate losing men on my watch. Especially young guys like him. It's just wrong, you know?"

"Yeah," Kaidan said softly. A stricken expression crossed his features like a cloud over sunlight. "We were joking around before. I bet you could probably tell he was a fan of yours. He was joking about how he could die happy now that he met you. And the whole serve under thing."

"Jesus," Shepard muttered.

Kaidan swallowed. "I shouldn't have said anything. I know he'd be pretty mad if we sat around moping on his behalf."

"You knew him better than I did."

"Yeah. I mean, maybe he wouldn't care what I did, but he'd hate it if you beat yourself up. Really hate it."

"You sure you're not just saying that?" she asked him.

"I would never."

"Hmm. Jury's out on if I believe you. But all right."

He was quiet a moment. "So . . . how are you feeling?"

She rubbed her eyes, her aching temples. "Got a real bastard of a headache. I feel like I went through a wood chipper. Better than before, though."

"What do you mean?" he asked her, frowning.

"Oh, just that I had some really weird dreams while I was out. They were almost too vivid to be dreams. It was like I was right there, in the middle of it all."

"What happened in them?"

"I'm not really sure," she said, struggling to remember. "There were these open places piled high with the dead, corpses of a species I've never seen before. I heard this . . . screaming, but it wasn't like human screaming. It felt like that tech feedback you get sometimes with cross-current signals, you know what I'm talking about?"

"I think so." He was thoughtful for a moment. "You think maybe the beacon was trying to tell you something?"

"'Trying' being the operative word. I didn't really get anything clear from it, just lots of death and destruction and screaming. I even smelled death, if you can believe it. When's the last time a dream made you smell anything?"

"I can't remember."

"Never, that's when. Jesus."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I thought it had killed you," he admitted. "You were seizing and jerking around, your eyes rolled in the back of your head, and we couldn't get your nose to stop bleeding. It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life."

"That can't be true," she disagreed. "You're a career man. You have to have seen some shitty things."

"Well, yeah," he admitted. "Sure. But I thought I had killed Commander Shepard, the big hero. Try getting that off your record." His eyes went wide. "And, I – I was worried, too. I mean, I didn't -" he trailed off, looking utterly furious with himself.

She decided to cut him a break, charmed by how hard he was trying and how much he seemed to care. "I know what you meant," she said, grinning. "I appreciate the thought."

He flashed her a tentative smile in return, and she felt her stomach leap at the sight of it, how beautiful it was. Not only beautiful in a physical way – like you appreciate a nice painting or a handsome man – but beautiful because of what hid behind it.

"So," she said, pushing the reaction away. "Is Chief Williams still with us?"

"Yeah," Kaidan answered promptly. "Anderson decided to transfer her to the Normandy."

"Good. She's a good soldier. Handled herself well down there."

"I thought so, too."

"Rough about her unit," Shepard sighed.

"You can probably commiserate," Kaidan offered, before biting down on the rest of that thought. "Never mind. Ma'am," he added hastily.

For some reason, she was not as put off by the comment as she would have been otherwise. It was partly that he didn't seem to be plying her into confessing the details of her storied past, and instead was just trying to be understanding and make conversation. It was also that he seemed to understand her reticence without needing her to say anything.

"Yeah, I can commiserate," she said finally. Her hand shuddered on the blanket, and she tightened it into a fist to keep it still. "So. I noticed you trained in the Sentinel program," she said easily.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied promptly.

"Finally, a kindred spirit. You have any idea how rare it is to find another biotic with the qualifying scores in the Tech Situationals?"

"I think I do," he said, smiling a little.

"What was your score, do you remember?"

Of course he remembered, and she loved the small bit of pleasure that he showed then; the subtle way he drew taller, the eager smile. "Twenty-nine ninety-six."

"Bullshit. You're fucking with me."

He went red – so ridiculously charming. "I am not!"

"I've never heard anyone getting that score. Geez, I thought mine was something to brag about."

"What was it?"

"Twenty-nine seventy."

"That's still well above average," he said, though his tone was placating, as if he was attempting to ease her pride.

"Not compared to yours! So what did you do when you found out you were four off from a perfect score? Tear your hair out and sob like a baby?" she teased.

"I was disappointed," he said, biting down on a grin.

"Oh my god. Go away before I smack you across the face."

"There was no reason why I shouldn't have gotten a perfect score!" he argued. "I knew the answers. I think I was distracted."

"Are you normally this modest?" she teased. "Really, it's unbecoming; you should take more pride in your accomplishments. This kind of self-deprecation makes me so sad."

"You know what would make me sad?" he asked her, losing the battle against his smile. "Getting a twenty-nine seventy. I'd really have failed if I did that poorly."

"Watch it, Lieutenant. I'll stick you on latrine duty for a month."

"Ah—yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am." He was instantly contrite and she felt almost guilty for the threat. He didn't know her well enough to know that she was just messing around with him, though the strength of his reaction was oddly endearing. She wanted to get to know him better, to bring out this sweetly funny side of him, hidden behind so many layers of protocol and control.

"I was kidding," she told him. "Don't fall on your sword just yet."

"Ah—right."

"Seriously, though. That's a remarkable score. You some kind of genius?"

"No, not really. I just work hard," he equivocated, shrugging a little. "It's easy to seem smarter than you are if you put in the work."

She fixed him with a skeptical look. "Why do I get the feeling you're normally this frustratingly modest?"

"I have no idea what would give you that feeling, ma'am," he deadpanned.

"I'm sure you don't."

He peered up at her, and she felt that strange swooping in her gut again. "Frustrating, though? Really?"

She realized how inappropriate it was for her to like this man in that moment when he looked up at her, his beautiful brown eyes searching and clear. It wasn't as if he was the first man she'd ever found attractive in her life – there were a few others, nothing really of note. But was how stunning and sudden this interest had come over her, and how quickly it intensified the more she spoke to him. She found herself eager to continue, eager to prod out his thoughts and opinions, slowly but surely. And it would be worth it; she knew that much without even thinking about it.

"Yeah, frustrating," she managed. "It's irritating when an obviously smart and skilled man refuses to see himself that way."

"I'll try not to frustrate any further, ma'am," he said, contrite.

Ah, and there it was again. She struggled for another subject, anything to get her mind off how charming and endearing he was.

"So you're a biotic. I don't remember seeing you in the Ascension program." She leaned back and watched closely for his reaction – a flash of something that reminded her very much of her own barbed memories, the things she preferred to forget.

"That was after my time," he said slowly. "I was part of BAaT."

"Ooh, a first generation. You wouldn't happen to be wired with the old L2 configuration, would you?"

He looked impressed. "That's right."

"Interesting. You know, I met a few L2s a ways back. You don't seem to be insane," she said, tapping her chin.

"Not that you can see, anyway," he said before he could stop himself.

"Good one," she grinned.

"But seriously, no. I've been lucky."

"No side effects, then?"

He shifted a bit, and she got the sense that he was uncomfortable enumerating his weaknesses and the things that pained him. "Well, I – I get migraines every now and then. Pretty mild, nothing serious."

"I wasn't aware there was such a thing as a mild migraine," she noted, arching a brow. "I mean, compared to debilitating mental illness, migraines does seem like getting off easy. But still, that must be hard."

"Not really. I've learned to manage them," he told her, and he looked away when she met his gaze.

"You'll have to teach me your ways. I get them every now and then, and I feel like I'm dying."

"Keep to cool, dark places. Lots of water. Sometimes deep breathing helps. Sometimes you just have to wait out the pain, though," he said promptly, as if eager to be of help.

"Ah ha! So they are painful," she said triumphantly, grinning up at him.

He realized a few seconds late that he'd been tricked into admitting that he suffered. "Clever."

"I try."

"Do you even get migraines?"

"Well, of course. I'm not a liar," she said with a bit of indignation. "Not that you'd have any reason to know that yet."

He twisted his hands in his lap. "I'd like to, though."

They both were stunned that he'd admitted it, that he'd given voice to the strangeness between them. She was charmed and also a bit afraid of that honesty and the implications it possessed. He was a series of appealing pieces she'd never known she'd liked; obvious skill, steadiness, intelligence, and a sweet kindness that he couldn't seem to hide. It certainly didn't help that he was handsome, either; that she found her gaze lingering on the straight angle of his nose, the curve of his lips, every leanly muscled line -

He recovered first. "I'm – I'm sorry, ma'am—"

She didn't have a chance to respond, for Captain Anderson chose that moment to enter the med-bay. Her relief was so overpowering that she would have stumbled if she hadn't already been lying down. "Captain," she said, bringing her hand up in a prompt salute, Kaidan quickly following suit.

"At ease. Lieutenant, do you mind if I have a word with our XO?"

"Of course, sir." Kaidan got to his feet quickly and made for the exit, but before he left he glanced at her one more time, his expression unreadable.

"Thank you for the company and the conversation, Lieutenant," she said evenly.

"Ah – it was my pleasure, ma'am," he replied before disappearing through the doorway.

And though she hardly knew him and had no way to actually know for certain, she believed he meant it.


	5. Chapter 5

It took another two days to reach the Citadel, and Kaidan spent the interim keeping to his duties as best as he was able. In light of his disastrous blunder a few days ago in the med bay, he'd redoubled his efforts at formality with Shepard. In a rare moment of candor he'd said that he wanted to get to know her better, and maybe to a civilian it wasn't such a dire mistake, but this woman was his superior, and there were strict regs on fraternization.

Still, though . . . she was beautiful. She was funny and kind, but for all her toughness, there was something similarly tender about her, and he found the inexplicable combination impossible to resist.

Well, he'd have to resist. It wasn't like she'd want to have much to do with him anyway. If they weren't pushed together by assignment, he imagined she wouldn't have bothered speaking to him at all. The thought made him desperately unhappy.

When they docked on the Citadel Kaidan had to keep his lips pressed together, or risk staring through the viewport with his mouth agape. He wasn't a backwater kid – he'd been a soldier for over a decade, and he'd see his fair share of space stations – but the Citadel was truly something else. He noted the five immense ward arms with particular appreciation, already speculating the mass based on its size and the force required to keep such a structure intact.

He heard Shepard suck in a breath beside him, and when he glanced over at her out of the corner of his eye, he saw her expression betray profound wonder. "You ever see anything like this?" she breathed.

"No, ma'am," he replied promptly.

Behind him, Ashley snorted. "Jesus. Lighten up, LT."

"Now, Chief," Shepard admonished, but he saw the corner of her lips quirk slightly. "Play nice."

Ashley snapped her heels together in an impressive mockery of Kaidan. "Yes, ma'am! Just like you say, ma'am!"

Shepard bit her lip together against the grin that struggled to break free, and even though he knew the both of them were making light of him, he couldn't stop himself from wishing she'd smile for real.

They'd been instructed to rendezvous with Ambassador Udina at his office in the Presidium. The problem was that none of them had been to the Citadel before, and had no idea how to get to said office. Shepard fished out a datapad with a map of the ward arm flashing on its face, and her brow wrinkled in consternation as she scanned the contents.

"This is gibberish," she groused. "Remind me why we didn't just tail Anderson?"

"He was instructed to meet with Ambassador Udina privately for the entire morning," Kaidan said.

"Maybe he thought we'd appreciate a chance to explore?" Ashley supplied.

"Might as well," Shepard said. "I have no idea where the hell I'm going anyway. Maybe we'll stumble on it while wandering."

"Who'd have thought," Ashley grinned. "The great Commander Shepard couldn't find her way out of a wet paper bag."

"Watch it, Chief. I'll make you clean out bedpans for a month."

"Shaking in my boots, over here."

This time it was Kaidan's turn to suppress a snort of laughter. He knew Shepard's easy manner was hardly reserved for him, but that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy it. It was probably all he'd have the chance to do, considering the situation. 

Jesus. Where were these thoughts even coming from? A few days ago, he'd watched a good friend die on Eden Prime, and only a few days later he was goggling at his Commander, and that wasn't even thinking about Jenkins' own feelings toward Shepard. Not that he'd had a claim on her – no one had, of course – but it left Kaidan with a weird, guilty feeling that curdled in his gut like soured meat.

"You look sick, LT," Ashley quipped. "Doing all right back there?"

"Ah – yeah. Fine," he managed. "Big place, and all."

He winced. More ridiculous words had probably never been spoken. "That your professional opinion, sir?" Ashley smirked. She seemed to be taking a perverse amusement in his failure to communicate like an adult.

"It is, though," Shepard cut in, and he understood a half-second late that she was speaking on his behalf. "How many people do you figure live on this ward arm alone?"

"Half a million?" he offered.

"At the least! They got embassies for almost every species in the galaxy," she said, and she leaned over the observation railing, peering up at the ward arms and the nebula beyond.

"Weird that only the asari, turians, and salarians have a voice in the Council," Ashley muttered. "You almost get the feeling they're afraid to share."

"That may be," Shepard equivocated. "I don't know if we've been around long enough to have an opinion."

Ashley turned and stared. "What do you mean, ma'am?"

"Well, how many years have we been a part of the galactic community? Twenty-six? Yet some of the species have been around since the beginning. I don't know if we've earned the right for a say yet."

"I don't see why not," Ashley argued. "We're members of the same galaxy, just like them. And now that we're a part of this community, their decisions are going to affect us. We should have a say for that reason alone."

"I don't know," Shepard said. She turned away and gazed into the distance, perhaps at the nebula above them. Her temperance and consideration was a welcome surprise, but at that moment it struck Kaidan how remote she was – how unlikely it was that he'd ever understand everything that comprised her opinion and experience, and it was still stunning to realize that he wanted to.

"What do you think, LT?" Ashley asked. It occurred to him that she was irritated by his silence.

He shrugged and cleared his suddenly dry throat. "I mean, I can understand where you're coming from," he began. "But I don't know. We're newcomers here. Doesn't seem right for us to barge in and demand to be a part of the decision-making process. It definitely won't make us any friends, either." He shifted a little. "That's my opinion, anyway."

Ashley wasn't amused, but Shepard gave him a small smile, and though he'd chastised himself enough over the last few days on the subject of control, he couldn't help smiling back at her.

"I just don't think we're going to get the say we need by being cautious about it," Ashley argued. "They have their opinions on us. And you see how the Council races treat the others that aren't on the Council yet, and they've been around way longer than we have."

Shepard sighed. "I don't think that's right, either."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"Me?" Shepard quirked a brow. "I'm a soldier. I don't think I'm in the position to really do anything about it."

"That's bullsh—that's bull, ma'am," Ashley said, reddening a bit. "You're not just a soldier; you're Commander Shepard. You've got more clout than you think." She shot Kaidan a knowing look. "Right, LT?"

He wasn't really sure what Ashley's deal was, but he sure didn't appreciate it. "Ah – yeah," he managed. Truthfully, he agreed with the Chief. Shepard wasn't just a Commander, like she thought; she was possibly the greatest hero and most talented careerman the armed services had ever seen. It was part of why he found her so fascinating, and admitting this openly felt exceptionally dangerous.

Didn't help that she was gorgeous, either.

Shepard didn't seem convinced. She pushed away from the railing and queued up the map once again. "Let's go," she said after a moment. "Don't think the Captain will appreciate us being late."

It took them the rest of the morning to find Udina's office. She asked them to wait in the hallway before slipping inside, and it occurred to Kaidan that her expression was apprehensive. He wondered what was making her so anxious while they waited; was it the mission on Eden Prime, and the myriad ways it had gone south? Was it the visions that plagued her since the disaster with the Prothean beacon?

He hadn't known Shepard long, but he worried about her.

"Hey LT," Ashley said as an aside, casually leaning against the wall. "Tell me something."

"What would you like to know?" he asked, and though he normally endeavored to be polite, something about the solicitous tone of her voice made him wary.

"Did you hear they were thinking about making the Commander a Spectre?"

"No, I hadn't heard that." He frowned. "Mind telling me where you heard that?"

Ashley shrugged. "Just the scuttlebutt. Supposedly that turian was evaluating her for the position. Dunno if it'll happen now, because he was killed."

Maybe the Chief was trying to be friendly, but it made him feel low to gossip behind Shepard's back. Even so, he wondered about this. It would have boded extremely well for humanity's position in the galactic community, because it would mean the Council trusted humans enough to operate as their agents. And if there was a human suited to the job, it was Shepard. She would have made a fine Spectre, considering all he knew of the position; she was talented, skilled, and devoted.

Shepard strode through the office doors a few hours later, looking similarly exhausted and irritated. She attempted a bright expression when she saw Kaidan and Ashley, but it struck him false.

"What happened?" Ashley wanted to know.

Shepard let out a long sigh. "Come on. We'll walk and talk."

Shepard was used to less than conventional assignments. Barring the Blitz, even. She'd jury-rigged a bomb during an assignment in the Traverse with nothing more than the contents of her pack, and secured a stronghold without losing a single man by negotiating peace with a group of batarians, all while her translator had been broken. She was used to pulling through odd situations.

But nothing came close to the situation now. A rogue Spectre named Saren and the legions of geth he commanded were making trouble for human colonies in the Traverse. Not to mentions she was plagued by the strange visions she'd experienced after activating the Prothean beacon. They were persistent and terrifying, and she was prone to flashing back to a fragment of one during all hours of the day, regardless of what she was doing.

It didn't come as a surprise that the Council wasn't interested in the accusations against Saren without tangible proof. Though the Council refused to accept the eyewitness testimony of the traumatized dock worker they'd encountered, which complicated matters. Their only recourse at the moment was to seek out the C-Sec officer who had investigated Saren.

C-Sec, however, was being less than helpful. She had spent the last three hours waiting at their offices with a leftover headache fluttering in her skull, explaining for the fifteenth time that she was an Alliance officer and not some overly curious citizen, and therefore had a right to the name of the officer investigating Saren.

In the end, Anderson was the one who pointed them in a direction that didn't involve harassing C-Sec secretaries. He instructed they question a C-Sec officer named Harkin, who liked to drink away his suspension at Chora's Den in the Wards.

"About time," Ashley muttered, but said no more.

Where the Presidium had been bright and clean, the Wards seemed perpetually darkened by grime and lit by the bright florescence of the shops and clubs. She caught a glimpse of Kaidan with his fingers over his brow, at the wrinkle there, and felt a surge of pity for him.

"How you doing?" she asked as an aside, too quietly for the Chief to hear.

He attempted a grin for her sake. "Ah – it's fine," he said quickly. "You don't have to worry about me, Commander."

It was a little surprising to realize that she did worry about him, considering they hardly knew one another. Though . . . that wasn't exactly true. After their conversation in the med bay, she felt like she knew him better than some of her friends. Or maybe what she felt was the desire to know. It had grown muddled in her head.

"If you say so," she said. "It's just that I feel like I know what it's like for you, now. From . . ."

"From the beacon," he supplied quietly.

"Yeah."

It suddenly struck her that he seemed nervous. "I appreciate it, ma'am," he said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away. God – what business did a man have with being so sweet? So . . . good? She might have resented how it affected her, if she didn't like him so much.

"Get down!" she heard Ashley said, and she threw both of them against the ground entirely out of instinct. Three spots slammed into the wall – exactly where they had been seconds earlier.

Snarling, she drew her pistol and took cover behind the railing, peeking around to line up her shots. Beside her, Kaidan fried the assailants' guns and taking advantage of their incapacitation, she slammed them with a warp that shuddered through her arms and made her teeth prickle. Ashley mopped up the rest with precision, and once again, it was silent.

"Assassins," Ashley spat. "Saren's men, you think?"

"Would make sense for him to try and get rid of us before we find anything," Kaidan agreed.

Shepard let out a breath. "Anyone hurt?"

"No ma'am," Kaidan replied promptly, and Ashley echoed him.

"Guess this means we're on the right track, huh?" She holstered her gun. "Come on."

Chora's Den was one of the most popular gentlemen's blubs in the Wards. A combination of gorgeous (and desperate) dancers and management with a lax attitude towards the law meant that a man could conduct his business and enjoy a bit of pleasure at the same time, and this mix was understandably popular with the Citadel's less than reputable folk. Shepard felt quite a bit like she had a target painted on her forehead as they stepped through the Den's doors, but Harkin was here, and he had their lead. She'd endured worse.

"What's your problem, LT?" Ashley asked Kaidan, one of her dark brows arching delicately.

"Nothing," he replied immediately. "This isn't my kind of place."

"But . . .?" she prompted.

Kaidan coughed delicately. "It's got a nice view. If – if you go for that sort of thing."

Ashley was less than pleased. "Uh huh. Pop those googly-eyes back in your thick skull, LT."

"Can it, you two," Shepard retorted. It took her a moment to realize Kaidan's comment was what had irritated her. She wasn't the jealous type, really, but the idea of Kaidan appreciating this kind of place really annoyed her for some reason. She flushed and resumed her scan of the bar, studiously ignoring the both of them.

It didn't take them long to find Harkin. He was slumped over a table in the back of the room, a half dozen empty beer bottles littered around his head. "Harkin?" she said, struggling to speak over the thudding music of the club.

Harkin stirred and fixed her with a bleary gaze, his lips curving in a lascivious grin as he studied her. "Gotta say, sweetheart; that soldier getup looks real good on that bod of yours."

She was aware of Kaidan at her side in that moment, and his expression stunned her. It was hotly furious, the lines of his face drawn in outrage. "How about you address the Commander with respect?" he snapped, and a wisp of biotic power flared over his fist in warning.

She was too stunned to say anything for a moment – both from the strength of his reaction and from the realization that hers was not to be irritated he spoke on her behalf but secretly pleased he cared enough to intervene at all.

"Call off your dog, lady," Harkin drawled. "I'm not afraid of either of you."

"Then you aren't so smart, are you?" Shepard said calmly. "See these guns? See this?" She let a pulse of biotic energy roll over her hands. "This is no getup. I'd answer my questions without the disgusting little overtures if you like your face the way it is, are we clear?"

"Yeah, we're clear," Harkin muttered. "Crazy bitch."

Shepard ignored this, though she heard Kaidan's jaw snap in fury. "We're looking for the officer who handled the Saren investigation. You wouldn't happen to know who that was, would you?"

Harkin was too drunk, too stupid, or too pissed at his former employers to care about discretion. "You mean Garrus? Damn hothead, is what he is. They took him off the case since he got nothing, right? But he charges off on his own, barking 'bout red tape and restrictions and yadda yadda." Harkin snorted, sending one of the bottles crashing to the ground. "Hothead."

"Do you know where he is now?"

"Said something about investigating a clinic by the Wards markets before he stormed off. You could probably find the mess he'll have left there if you hurry."

"What do you mean by that?"

Harkin grinned, baring a row of crooked teeth. "I said he's a damn hothead, didn't I?"

Shepard sighed. "Thanks for the help, Harkin."

"Oh, anything for a pretty face. I mean that," Harkin replied, and she had to actively repress a shudder when he licked his lips in what was clearly supposed to be an enticing manner.

"Right. Enjoy your hangover," she said in disgust, and she strode away from his table before he could level a retort.

They were out of the club when Kaidan finally pulled her aside, and it struck her that his expression was contrite. "I – I'm sorry about what happened in there, Commander," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "For what I said."

"There's no need to apologize," she told him honestly. "Harkin's an ass."

"That's the truth." Kaidan sighed, and it nearly knocked the breath out of her when he looked up, his eyes piercing and yet guarded. "I don't know. Guys like him really rub me the wrong way."

It shouldn't have mattered what he liked. It shouldn't have mattered that he was kind or chivalrous or considerate, or far too handsome to be allowed. None of these things should have registered to her, because he was hardly the first kind, chivalrous, and handsome man she'd known. And yet they did – these qualities comprised something that went beyond words, something that she didn't properly understand but feared regardless.

"Just forget about it," she said, unnerved. "No harm done."

They continued on toward the Wards markets, but Shepard found it nearly impossible to put her head where it belonged. She was nettled by the lie, dripping hot and thick from her tongue. She said there had been no harm done, and it had been the farthest thing from the truth. Honestly, every word he spoke brought her closer to inevitable harm. Honestly, she was becoming afraid of the way he affected her – the thrilling magnitude of it, the impossible breadth.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Kaidan was a military man; routine was his milieu. He woke at 0500 sharp every morning, did exactly one hundred and ten pushups, and made the same breakfast for himself that he'd had every morning for the last ten years; ham, eggs, and toast with peanut butter. He saw it in an imminently logical way; a machine performs best when primed through infinite repetition. So too, would he perform best after his comfortable rituals, his thoughtful routine.

Considering this, he should have been dismayed by Shepard's entrance in his life. That would have been the logical reaction to an element of pure change; a grain of sand in the gears that forces the whole thing to a stop. It should have been indicative of a larger problem that he wasn't upset at this change. It should have bothered him that he actually seemed to . . . like it.

He rubbed his temple absently. Forget routine; the last twenty-four hours had been so many different kinds of ridiculous, he had momentarily abandoned attempting to dictate a small measure of control on the situation. They'd found the C-Sec officer, Garrus Vakarian, and he'd led them on a chase through the lower levels of the Wards in search of a quarian with irrefutable evidence of Saren's guilt. They'd crossed paths with a krogan bounty hunter named Wrex before finding the quarian, moments away from being killed by cronies of a rogue Shadow Broker agent named Fist.

He'd run over the events in his mind for hours while they waited, because otherwise he suspected he would lose track of the minute details. The conclusion was there, regardless of how well he'd marked what came before – they'd gotten the evidence they needed to incriminate Saren, and for some reason, Vakarian, Wrex, and Tali insisted on coming along to bring Saren to justice.

So now they waited. Shepard was just through the doors, debriefing the Council; he could hear the subtle rise and fall of her voice bleed through the wall, the tone something like music. The Council may have been unwilling to listen to her before, but now there was no denying that Saren was working with the geth. Untested, Shepard may be, but it would be unreasonable not to listen to her now.

When she finally strode from the Council chamber, the first thing he noticed was the stunned expression that had made her nearly unrecognizable; he'd never seen Shepard look so unsteady on her feet, as if she distrusted that the world still operated in tandem with her experience. Her gaze drifted to his, and it seemed to him for a moment that there was a vague hint of expectation there, quickly followed by relief.

"Come on," she said dimly, gesturing for him to follow.

They were nearly to the Presidium Commons before he mustered the courage to speak. "What is it?" he asked her.

She struggled for words, her hands fluttering in desperation to give shape to what had transpired. "I . . . they're making me a Spectre," she said in a strange, breathless voice.

The silence seemed especially loud in the moments after she spoke. In a lot of ways, both practical and abstract, it made sense to promote Shepard to a Spectre. She was competent, skilled, with more commendations in her file than many career men could even imagine. She was bright and funny, and beautiful in an interesting way; a manner that was both tough and delicate. This was all without considering the role she'd played in uncovering Saren's corruption and guilt, which had been no small feat. She was everything that humanity sought to be, and therefore the perfect choice for a Spectre.

"Congratulations," he managed after the silence grew too large to manage. "That's . . . that's amazing." He kept his expression neutral, though he would have liked to wince; he'd always appreciated his proclivity to understatement, because it meant it was more difficult for him to say something stupid. Speaking to Shepard gave him the feeling that this was a failure.

"It's . . . god. I can't get my head around it," she said as she shook her head, perhaps to orient herself to this new reality. "They want me in the Chambers at 2100 hours."

That left almost the entire day. Kaidan didn't really know Shepard well yet, but he knew if it had been him waiting for such a prestigious promotion, he'd spend that time pacing and panicking in equal measure, wearing a groove in the floor as he made his dizzied revolutions. A careful look at Shepard's anxious expression made him suspect she'd handle the interim in the same way.

"What do you think you'll do?" he asked anyway.

She let out a half-laugh. "Panic, probably. Stress. Wallow in this cocktail of anxiety bubbling in my gut." She held a hand to her mouth. "Sorry. Probably too honest coming from your Commander and all."

It was informal and too honest, like she said, but he found that he craved more of these small, subtle glimpses into the woman behind the rank. "Nothing wrong with a bit of honesty," he assured her.

"You say that now," she warned. "Just wait, though. You'll regret those words before this is all done."

"I doubt it."

"Heh."

He spoke before he'd properly considered the implications of such a question. "Would you like to get something to eat? Ah—that is, if you don't have anything else you have to do. Or – or want to do." He mashed his lips together, humiliated. Every single time he spoke, he felt stupider, as if each word spirited a modicum of his intelligence away.

But – incredibly – she smiled. For the first time since she'd come from Udina's office, she smiled with real warmth, without a trace of reserve. "I don't think I'll be able to eat anything," she said, shrugging philosophically. "But I could use the company."

And it thrilled him that she preferred him for company to the others. To say nothing that he was readily available and the others were either on the Normandy or wandering around on their own. He had no delusions this meant or would mean anything. But she was fascinating, and she wanted his company. There was a victory somewhere in that.

Because their excursion was his idea, he led them to the only place on the Citadel he was familiar with; a little café overlooking the Presidium lake. The waitress gave them seats right on the edge, so that all he had to do was lean over to get a glimpse into the lake's pristine depths. He was accustomed to English Bay and its temperamental, active waters, but this lake was smooth as glass.

"It's too still, don't you think?" Shepard prompted.

"Actually, yeah; I was just thinking that," he admitted before he could check himself.

"Not that I have much experience with lakes and water and such, but I always expect it to be full of fish and whatever. Boat wakes, swimmers. This is kind of weird," she said, gesturing out to the glass-like water.

"Unnatural," he agreed.

She fell into silence, and her gaze was far away. When the waitress came to take her order, she politely declined, and he saw familiar lines of anxiety creasing between her brows and at the corners of her mouth. She caught his stare and smiled, though it seemed stiff.

"Not hungry?' he asked lamely.

"I have a feeling whatever I'd eat right now would coagulate and sit in my gut like a brick for the rest of the day. And I'd rather not be sick when the Council makes me a—a Spectre." She cleared her throat, threading her hands in her hair. "You must think I'm ridiculous."

 _I think you're exceptional,_ he thought. "Not at all. I'd think it'd be strange if you weren't anxious."

"What kind of person wouldn't be anxious about this?" she asked, incredulous. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around what could have possibly motivated the Council to consider me at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, think about it. I'm coming off a spectacular failure – one of my biggest failures, really. The Spectre evaluating me was killed, Jenkins was killed, the beacon was destroyed, and Saren got away. Now if you held that report in your hand, it wouldn't exactly inspire much confidence in the candidate, would it?"

She had him there and she knew it. "Objectively . . . no. But they weren't just looking at that one mission. They were looking at them all; successes and failures, both. And, they were impressed. I mean, who wouldn't be?" he blurted before he could stop himself.

One of her eyebrows quirked delightedly. "Really, now?"

"I – sorry, ma'am," he muttered. "It's the truth."

"Maybe," she allowed, her grin fading. "I don't know. I start thinking about that moment after the ceremony, when I have to go out there and  _be_ the first human Spectre, and . . . I don't know. I freeze. It's a huge responsibility. And I wouldn't say I'm a stranger to responsibility, exactly, but this is different. This is  _huge._ The Council is finally ready to allow humans a larger role, and how I do with this mission will directly affect the future of that relationship, not to mention the scope of this mission itself. Saren is a menace and he has to be stopped. So this is . . . it's more than just a responsibility."

She let out a long breath and unclenched her hands from her hair, looking up at him reproachfully. "I'm so sorry," she said. "Some superior officer I am."

Kaidan cleared his throat. "You – you are, ma'am. You've been chosen for this incredible honor, so don't think for a minute that you don't deserve it. You do."

She seemed to struggle for words, chewing the inside of her cheek as she considered, and when her gaze met his again he felt a little thrill run through him, electric and stark, as if she had touched him physically instead of with a glance. "I guess we'll see," she said. "This business with Saren and the geth . . . and those visions. A lot's riding on this."

"They still bothering you?" he asked her, frowning.

She rubbed her temple. "A bit," she hedged. "I don't know. I'm very honored to be made a Council Spectre, but with so much riding on it, I'd just as soon dispense with the ritual and get to work immediately. Every minute we sit around here, Saren gets further ahead. Every minute we wait is a minute that could have been used to stop him."

Her dogged devotion to her responsibilities did not surprise him; rather, he felt his admiration for her rise. "I know what you mean," he said quietly. "It's only a few hours to go."

She glanced at her watch. "Christ," she muttered.

"All the responsibility aside, what are you so nervous about? These ceremonies are routine for you."

"Ha! If only that were true," she laughed, her tone a little bitter. "I'll let you in on a little secret; I'm terrible at these ceremonies. Like . . . seriously abysmal."

"You're kidding."

"Not at all! I have stage fright like you wouldn't believe."

"I don't believe you."

She was wounded in her incredulity. "Why wouldn't you?! Are you telling me you never saw my acceptance speech from when I got the Star of Terra?"

"Which one?" he smirked.

"Don't be an ass."

"Well, I can't say anyone's ever called me an ass to my face before."

"I refuse to believe this, when you're clearly such an accomplished ass."

"Ouch."

"But I'm serious! If you want a laugh, check out the video. I stammer and stumble and make a complete dork of myself in front of every Alliance dignitary in existence. I wanted to die."

He shook his head, failing to stifle a grin. "I'm having a really hard time picturing this. You're so calm on the field. Assured, even when everything's going to hell."

"They're not at all alike!" she insisted, so loudly the group from the next table over shot her a dirty look. "You're on the field, it's just you and your squad. And the enemy. But those ceremonies . . . everyone is watching. There is no objective to focus on, so you have to focus on things like how everyone is staring at you, or how your breathing is too loud, or your sweaty, gross palms, and would they leave a mark if you wiped them on your pants at this moment? On and on until when it's finally your turn to speak, you're such a nervous wreck that you stammer and stutter like you have some kind of speech impediment. And everyone watching thinks 'so that's the great Commander Shepard; a stammering, stuttering moron'." She let out a breath and laid her palms flat on the table. "What a letdown, right? Commander Shepard is kind of a coward."

"Cowardice and stage fright is not the same thing," he corrected gently.

"Yeah, you're right." She sighed. "I'll cram it."

"That's not what I—"

"I know," she cut him off, grinning a little, and he found himself transfixed as she smiled, the exact angle of them, one tiny scar that cut through her top lip. He had thought that Shepard the Commander was what he responded to, but he found the more he learned of Shepard the woman, the more he wanted to know, the more he wanted to become a student of her minute gestures and idiosyncrasies, her wants and fears and needs.

"Hey," she said after a pause. "Thank you."

"For?"

"For tolerating me acting in a very un-Commander-like fashion without judging me." She paused, craning closer. "You're not judging me, are you?"

"Only in the best way," he said before he could bite back the reply, so forthcoming and bare, transparent as glass.

He quickly lost track of time as they spoke. Their food came and went without either of them noticing properly; Shepard picked at her burger before sending it away, so engrossed in their conversation that she had seemed to forget to be nervous. He found himself mesmerized by her laughter, the exact red of her hair as it curled against her neck, her slim fingers pushing it back. He was entranced by her stories, each one facet that comprised of a fascinating whole.

He'd never felt this way about anyone, not even Rahna. And the admonition that he felt anything was terrifying.

Even without the regular consideration of fear that accompanied infatuation, there was the stark fact that she was his commanding officer, and fraternization between superior and subordinate was heavily frowned upon. But what terrified him the most was to realize that he - a staunch lover of routine and rules – did not care as much about this as he should have. He lived his life with a desire to keep tight control on everything he did and felt, yet somehow Shepard had managed to weave around this in only a few short days.

If he was smart, he'd back off. He'd subtly bring up the wall that should be between an officer and a soldier, and she'd understand the meaning behind it. She'd retreat, put away her laughter, her closet of endearments. The pain that speculation elicited was shocking, like the unforgiving throb of a migraine, a bolt through the skull.

He'd always hated the expression 'between a rock and a hard place', but he found it fit this situation perfectly. The more he considered, the more he feared the logical solution was the best. What he knew of military fraternization was that it always ended badly; if not because the regs, then because of tragedy on the field. And this wasn't even considering his own disastrous experiences.

The waitress had been eyeing them irritably for a few hours, passing by their table and clucking her tongue when Shepard waved her away. She let out a huff when Shepard finally signaled for the check and tossed it on the table between them with a little more attitude than was strictly necessary.

"There goes her tip," Shepard smirked.

And then, it happened. They both reached across the table at the same moment, and his fingers brushed the back of her hand as it closed over the check. That's all it was – an errant touch – but it felt more like she had touched him with a live wire rather than her skin, as if she was less corporeal and more like a force of nature, ravaging and thrilling all at once. She gasped, and he knew in that exhilarating, horrible second that she had felt it exactly as he had. And in moment, he knew.

He knew, but he feared.

"I'll pick it up," he managed, struggling to speak past the thickness in his throat.

"Please," she waved him away, and he saw her cheeks were a delicate crimson. "I should thank you for listening to me whine somehow, shouldn't I?"

"You were hardly whining."

"You angling for a promotion or something?" she teased, though it sounded a little forced. "No need to butter me up."

"It seems I've been caught," he said, holding up his hands like an apprehended criminal.

"You hardly need to resort to tricks and manipulation," she told him. "What I've seen on Eden Prime alone is enough to put your name forward."

He was stunned. "I – thank you, Commander."

She shrugged off his praise, unable to meet his gaze. Her face was still quite red. "Don't mention it."

They were halfway to the Council Chambers when she spoke again. He'd both enjoyed and stressed over the silence as it grew longer, but struggled to find something suitable to break it, so it was with no small amount of relief when she turned to him expectantly. "Think they'll make more human Spectres after this?"

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe."

"Hm." She was silent again, watching the Presidium commons grow smaller as they shot upward in the elevator. "I think you'd make a good Spectre," she said finally.

"W-what?"

"I mean it," she said. "I know we haven't served together long, but I think you'd be one of the best of them all."

"I don't mean to be disrespectful, ma'am, but . . . why?"

"I don't exactly know," she said honestly. "I just have a good feeling about you."

As he watched her nervously pull her dress blue straight, her jaw hard and lips pressed into a determined line, her fathomless eyes narrowed with determination, he could honestly say that the feeling was mutual. Perhaps more than she would ever know.

 


	7. Chapter 7

It was just as horrible as Shepard feared.

The moment she'd hit the landing of the Council chambers, she'd been wrenched away from Kaidan's side and ushered into a side chamber, where various aides and C-Sec agents stood guard. It was to prepare, they had said, but it didn't feel any less intrusive or stressful, so Shepard resigned herself to frantic pacing, watching the seconds creep by on her watch.

Twenty minutes passed, and she felt like the food she'd managed to eat had solidified into a brick in her gut.

She shouldn't have eaten. She shouldn't have done anything but wait here and prepare. Was she expected to give a speech, or was the Council content to have her smile and wave to the gathered crowd? Either option was horrible, but at least the latter involved no speaking, which was where the brunt of Shepard's anxiety rested.

Well, it was if she discounted what being a Spectre meant, and what she knew was expected of her. There was Saren, wreaking havoc on the galaxy with the aid of the geth. There was the mystery of the Reapers and her strange visions. As nice as it was for the Alliance and humanity to see one of their own receive such an honor, the ceremony was not the most important thing in the galaxy right now.

Shepard chewed on her thumb with so much fervor that it took her nearly five minutes to realize that she'd bitten back the nail far enough to bleed, the taste of blood blunt on her tongue. In the corner of the room, one of turian C-Sec agents let out a nearly inaudible noise of derision, and she realized she must look ridiculous to him. Even back here, supposedly away from prying eyes, she was being judged and found wanting. She let her hand fall to her side and took a dignified seat, careful not to look at him again.

But she couldn't keep from bouncing her leg at a frenetic pace.

"What do you mean, off limits?" said a hard voice from behind the door. "Commander Shepard is my superior officer, and I've been ordered to relay a message to her from Admiral Hackett himself!"

"Why wouldn't your admiral come and deliver his own message?" one of the C-Sec guards asked skeptically.

She realized the first voice was Ashley, suddenly obvious by the bite of her tone. "He's an admiral; he gets to send gofers. If it's a problem, I'll go . . . but can't say the admiral will be happy about it."

The C-Sec agent wasn't pleased, but seemed to decide he'd rather deal with this intrusion instead of possible weeks of paperwork from denying such an important foreign officer. The door whooshed open and an appropriately stern looking Ashley strode through. It sent a hot rush of fresh anxiety to see Kaidan at her side, looking just as out of place as she felt. But when she caught his gaze, he smiled a little; tentative, but wonderful all the same.

"Some privacy?" Ashley asked the C-Sec agent in the corner.

"I'm afraid-" he began, but Ashley cut him off.

"You already confirmed our identities and took our weapons. We're not going to do anything."

"Be that as it may, I can't –"

"It's all right," Shepard said, suppressing a grin. "I can vouch for them both."

She couldn't be certain – turian facial expressions were still so incomprehensible to her – but it seemed quite a lot like he scowled before stomping out of the chamber and shutting the door behind him with a decidedly irritated click. Once he'd gone, Ashley turned to Kaidan and grinned impishly, her eyes bright. "I told you it would work."

"What's the message?" Shepard asked her.

Ashley radiated smugness. "There is no message. Just wanted to lend some moral support. LT here said you were freaking."

"I didn't say anything of the kind," Kaidan said immediately, looking appropriately horrified. "You guessed."

"Huh. I did, didn't I?" Ashley shrugged. "Details."

Shepard figured she should have been upset by her transparency and the ease in which her subordinates saw right through her, but at the moment she was so acutely relieved by their presence that she couldn't bring herself to be irritated. "Clever, Chief," she said allowed.

"Yeah, yeah. Anyways, I just wanted to tell you that you'll be great, ma'am." Ashley took her by the shoulders. "I can't think of anyone out there who would make a better Spectre than you."

"You don't know me well enough to make that judgment," Shepard deflected.

"I know enough," Ashley replied. "I've seen you in action, remember?"

"Yeah . . ."

"So buck up. Don't let those Council races see they've got you freaking out. Let them see that you're calm and collected and totally ready to make the rest of their Spectres obsolete."

The thought sent another rough wave of anxiety rolling through her gut. The burger from earlier was about to become a permanent resident. "Christ."

Ashley frowned. "You have anything you want to add, LT?"

Kaidan shifted on his feet, and she could tell he was wracking his brain for some practical advice; the best kind, he'd said. "You should probably think of what you want to say to the reporters," he said in what he probably thought was a very helpful tone.

"There are reporters here?!" Shepard wheezed. The burger-brick flipped weakly before lodging itself in her throat.

"Nice going, you moron," Ashley hissed at him.

"I just thought it's good to be prepared, instead of being blindsided," he retorted. "Right?"

"Yeah," Shepard said, fiddling with one of the brass buttons of her uniform. "Please tell me it's not Westerlund. It's not Westerlund, right?" She glanced up at the both of them, their uncomfortable expressions perfectly mirrored. " _Right?!"_

"Yeah . . ." Ashley said.

"Sorry Shepard," Kaidan echoed.

"Right. It's fine. It's nothing. No big deal." She was babbling, and she clamped down on her lips to keep anything more incriminating from pouring out. Good practice for later, she supposed.

Westerlund News - and more specifically their chief correspondent Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani - had been a plague on her increasingly public career, all starting from the day she'd received her first Star of Terra. The ceremony and her speech had been enough of a disaster, but al-Jilani had seemed to take perverse pleasure in commentating, positing that Shepard must be little better than an inept-woman child since she handled the ceremony so poorly, and speculating that her family ties were the only thing that bought her the position of Commander.

It was fair to say that there was no love lost between them. Figured they'd be here today, hanging around the periphery, al-Jilani muttering to her camera about Shepard's raggedly bitten nails and disheveled appearance and the expression of obvious terror plain on her face.

Something solidified in Shepard, and it wasn't just the ever-present burger thunking around the vicinity of her tender gut. It was determination not to make a fool out of herself this time. Not in front of Westerlund or al-Jilani, not in front of the entire Alliance and her crew. With a resolute breath, she stood.

"Ma'am?" Kaidan asked.

"It's nothing," she told him, and smiled. "Thanks for the pep talk."

"Is this sarcasm, or . . . ?" Ashley wondered, suspicious.

"No, no sarcasm here," Shepard assured her. "Probably should get ready. Go find a place to watch. That is, if there are any left."

"We'll find something," Ashley said. "Let's go, LT."

The two of them turned to leave, but not before Kaidan glanced at her one more time. He looked a little miserable and guilty, his eyes tight at the corners, but he attempted a half-smile for her when he met her gaze. It wasn't fair that he could still manage to send a thrill running through her gut, even when she was so anxious she was having trouble processing anything other than various degrees of panic. She returned the smile best she was able, and he was gone.

Really, though; he had no business being so kind. It wasn't right that all he had to do was look at her to reduce her to a babbling pile of anxiety. Though that could have been due to the impending ceremony. She couldn't tell the difference anymore.

The C-Sec guards came for her not long after that. "Ready, Commander?" the first asked, and she definitely wasn't imagining the derision in his tone.

"Yes," she said without inflection.

They led her through the hall without any fanfare or preparation, though she noticed their hands never strayed far from their guns. Of course; this was a contentious political issue, and there were undoubtedly other races less than pleased with the induction of the first human Spectre. Unhappy enough to make trouble, judging from the C-Sec response. Why had they insisted on clothing her in dress blues instead of her reliable armor? Why had they taken away her weapons? If there was going to be trouble, she'd feel a lot better knowing she'd be able to handle it.

Shepard wasn't inclined toward pessimism most of the time, but this definitely did not bode well.

It was just as bad as she feared. Hadn't she thought that earlier today? Instead of improving as the minutes marched on, everything took a decided turn for the worse the minute she stepped into the Council Chamber. It was packed with dignitaries, C-Sec, reporters, and soldiers; she'd never seen such a collection of the galaxy's multiple interests in one place. It figured, of course. They all turned to her the minute she entered the room, and she felt like crawling into a hole and staying there for the rest of her life.

"Commander Shepard has entered the chamber, looking disinterested and remote as C-Sec leads her to her position before the Council. Perhaps you'd think the first human bestowed with the position of Council Spectre would show proper emotion and respect for honor she is about to receive, but I can't say I'm surprised. We at Westerlund remember the Blitz honors ceremony . . ."

Disinterested? Remote? Considering the alternative was blind, frothing panic, Shepard would take it.

C-Sec endeavored to keep the gathered crowd quiet and under control with only mixed success – the reporters would only consent to lowering their voices slightly when the Council stood, whispering into their mics with fervent desperation, eager to capture every single detail of the moment for posterity.

Though she knew she should keep her eyes forward, Shepard could not stop herself from scanning the room. She was searching for a familiar and lovely face, one she knew would give her strength in the moments to come. It was like she'd known where he was all this time when she caught sight of him standing with Ashley and the others, calm and controlled and perfectly upright. When he smiled and nodded slightly, she felt the tight knot of anxiety in her gut loosen slightly -- just enough to speak.

"Step forward, Commander," Councilor Valern said. She obeyed, keeping her back straight and inflexible as a beam. Her hands locked behind her.

"It is the decision of this Council to appoint you to the position of Council Spectre. This is an honor humanity has never been granted before, but we have judged your race to be ready to take a more active role in the galactic community as a whole," Councilor Tevos said, more mellifluously than Shepard would ever be able to manage.

"As of this moment, you are an instrument of the Council. If we are the will of the law, you are the hand. It is a responsibility not to be taken lightly, for it involves a lifelong commitment to the ideals our galaxy has upheld for thousands of years. In accepting this position, you agree to be a champion of justice and of peace. You agree to enforce our will," Councilor Sparatus intoned, and it seemed to Shepard that his voice was hard.

She wasn't going to lie; this ceremony was making her extremely uncomfortable, and not just because of her baseline anxiety over public events. It was that the Council now seemed to expect her to place her loyalty to them above her loyalty to the Alliance, and she wasn't sure if that was something she was willing to do.  _Too late, now,_ she thought angrily. But the suspicion continued to hound her.

Councilor Valern spoke once again, his wide owlish eyes fixed on her. "You vow to protect the Council and all it stands for. You vow to defend the galaxy from any and all that would harm it. You vow to do all in your power and ability for the sake of us all. If these are truths, speak them now."

Shepard felt cold sweat beading on her brow, and the villainous burger from earlier had frozen into a lump of ice in her churning gut. She feared that the moment she opened her mouth, it would finally make its bid for an escape. All attempts to regulate her breathing had more or less failed, and she suspected the holocams were broadcasting her in all her drowned-rat glory galaxy-wide. But she cleared her throat and made an effort – the only thing she could manage.

"I vow to protect the Council and all it stands for. I vow to defend the galaxy from anything or anyone that would harm it. I – I vow to do all that's in my power for the sake of us all," she said, and she considered it no small miracle that she didn't choke on the words or misspeak them entirely.

"Then we would like to welcome you into the ranks of the Spectres, Commander Shepard," Councilor Tevos said with a smile on her face, and the room erupted into applause. Funny – she'd been expecting an awkward silence. Her thanks were drowned out by the crowd; she couldn't even hear the reporters editorializing to their viewers (which went a long way to improving her outlook). She bowed to the Council before striding away, guided by the C-Sec agents that had led her this far.

Before she stepped out of view, however, she caught a glimpse of Kaidan in the crowd. This time, she returned his smile.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Shepard spent the first twenty minutes as the first human Spectre puking her guts out.

She was assaulted by a reel of images that spun too quickly to be properly observed; the Blitz, the young men she'd seen die in her career, the burned out places she'd left behind, a rifle clutched in desperate hands; and amid it all, a man she should have been able to ignore. She saw the vision from Prothean beacon, and though she'd pulled it apart in her thoughts many times since Eden Prime, there was never any new insight; it remained as obscure as ever. Past and future mingled in her worry, coupled with the dim fact that she did not feel worthy of this responsibility and honor that she'd been given, not by many degrees.

Not for the first time, she wished her mother was still alive. Captain Hannah Shepard had never met a challenge she couldn't defeat. Her mother would have known exactly what to do, and she wouldn't even have broken a sweat. She took her struggles in stride and never betrayed a minute of doubt or worry.

It went without saying that Shepard had not inherited this trait.

Shepard laid her head on the cold toilet seat and imagined her mother sitting next to her. Even kneeling on a linoleum floor, she would have been poised and in control, her expression a masterwork of almost zen calm.  _You're working yourself up again_ , she would have said.  _You're building this up in your head_.

"I know," Shepard moaned aloud. "I can't help it."

_You can. You're always in control of how you react._

Maybe Hannah Shepard had managed that little nugget of wisdom in her lifetime, but Sam Shepard still had quite a long way to go.

_So what's really bothering you?_

Shepard didn't even want to admit it in this imaginary conversation with her very dead mother, who'd been blasted into component atoms by a slaver ship almost a year ago.

_I know responsibility of this scale wouldn't bother you this much. You've handled similar situations before._

"Not like this," Shepard insisted.

_Close, then._

Maybe that was true. "You already know," Shepard said, closing her eyes. "You're a figment of my imagination."

_Possibly. Or perhaps I just want you to admit it to yourself._

Shepard sighed. "It's a man."

_Is he bothering you?_

"He isn't. That's the problem." Shepard rubbed her eyes, hard enough that whirling geometric shapes danced behind her lids. "I don't know what to do."

_Why?_

"I don't know," Shepard admitted. "I hoped you would."

She waited for her imaginary mother to bestow her with such perfect wisdom that it would illuminate her path forward and she would no longer have to suffer such cowardly indecision. But no answer came, and Shepard knew; this wasn't Hannah Shepard. This was an echo she held close to her heart, only a small piece of the woman who had left it behind.

Well, Shepard knew this much; man or no man, Hannah Shepard would not let herself fall to pieces when something threatened the safety of her crew and the galaxy as a whole. She worked her whole life to make it a safer place for those who couldn't defend themselves, and she did it without all the hand-wringing. Shepard knew she'd never be as skilled and sure as her mother, but damn it all, she was going to try her best.

After she emptied her guts in the toilet, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and pulled herself together. Free of the burger-brick that had tormented her through the induction ceremony, she felt somewhat better than she had in hours. She splashed some water over her face before striding from the bathroom, trying not to think at all.

* * *

"She did pretty good, don't you think?" Ashley said animatedly, stowing her hardsuit.

"Yeah," Kaidan said, distracted. He would never say anything to the Chief, but she'd neglected to check the seals before she stuffed her armor in the locker. It wasn't strictly required, per se, but Kaidan always made a habit of it. Could never be too careful, in his opinion.

"I thought she was going to puke, though. Did you see her face?"

"Yeah."

"That lady's made of tougher stuff than most, though. Even if she did feel like she was going to be sick."

"I guess," he shrugged, slamming his locker shut with a note of finality and striding to the elevator. Maybe she'd get the hint and leave him alone.

Of course, he was never that lucky. "Hey, now," Ashley called, and she ran to catch up to him. "Hold on."

"What is it?"

"You're pissed."

"No."

"If you aren't, you're doing a fantastic impression of Pissed Lieutenant." Ashley smirked.

"You're very funny."

"Aren't I?" She fixed him with a steady stare. "Do you like the Commander or something?"

"I like her as much as anyone on the ship," he managed.

Ashley quirked a brow. "Yeah, and my mother was the Consort."

He pulled himself straight; he was this woman's superior, and he wasn't going to be pushed around. "This is not any of your business, Chief."

She held up her hands. "Fine, fine, pull rank. I just thought I'd say you guys seem liked you'd be good for each other."

He was too stunned to say anything for a moment. "What?"

"I mean it. You have this quiet, serious thing going on, and she's . . . well, she's kind of a dork." Ashley paused. "She's an even bigger dork around you. I don't know, I just thought it was kind of sweet."

"You talk about all your commanding officers that way?" Kaidan asked pointedly.

"Only the ones I like."

He decided to let it slide. "Look, I . . . appreciate the thought. Even if it is misguided."

"What, are you going to pretend I'm completely wrong and out of line now?"

"You  _are_ out of line. And I don't see how you'd know any differently."

Ashley scoffed. "I hate to break it to you, LT, but you are extremely obvious.  _Extremely."_

"No, I'm not."

"It's actually kind of adorable. This sweet, awkward dance you're doing. Not my thing, but the Commander's a sucker for it."

"And you would know, would you."

"I'm an excellent judge of character, so yeah – I think I would know."

"Right. Well, whatever you think you know, I assume you know enough to keep quiet about it."

"Well, of course. What, do you think I'm some kind of gossip or something? Please."

Kaidan was saved from having to dignify that with a response by the elevator, which opened to reveal the turian that had helped them uncover the truth about Saren. Garrus, he remembered belatedly. The three of them stared at each other for a long, stunned moment.

Ashley recovered first. "Vakarian, right?" she asked, and Kaidan noted a slight edge to her tone; the jocularity from before all but forgotten.

"Right," Garrus said. "And you're . . .?"

"What the hell are you doing on this ship, Vakarian?" Ashley demanded, her eyes narrowing on a duffel slung across the turian's shoulders.

Garrus cleared his throat. "I've, ah, been hired by your Commander. I've got the proper clearance and everything."

Ashley gaped. "Why does she need  _you?"_

"You're probably going to have to ask her that," Garrus said.

"I mean, don't you have a job or something?"

"I did have a job," Garrus clarified, his mandibles twitching slightly.

"Right. Yeah, you know, I think I will ask the Commander," Ashley said, bristling with plain dislike.

"It's nice to see you again, Garrus," Kaidan cut in, and he held out his hand, which Garrus shook tentatively. "Looking forward to working with you."

"Likewise, Lieutenant."

Ashley watched the turian set up a place for himself by the Mako, her impressive glowering only interrupted by the elevator door. "What is wrong with you?" she demanded, rounding on Kaidan as soon as the lift lurched upward.

"I could ask you the same question, Chief."

"This is an Alliance vessel. A prototype one at that. You're not at all weirded out by a turian sniffing around the underbelly with full, unrestricted access?"

"The turians are our allies now," he reminded her.

"Right," Ashley bit out, her voice ripe with sarcasm. "Allies."

She refused to speak to him for the rest of the day, probably irritated that he hadn't backed her up with Garrus. Why would he have? She was rude and the turian had done nothing to deserve that attitude. Not yet, anyway. Maybe Ashley would end up being right about him, maybe not. But Garrus deserved the chance to prove himself first.

Kaidan was an only child and he had no other point of reference, but he imagined that this must be like what having a younger sister felt like. Getting along well enough one minute, fighting the next. Other considerations aside, he didn't know Ashley well enough to lecture her for her rudeness. It wasn't his place, nor would it have been even if they were related.

It was a few hours later when Shepard finally came aboard. She smiled and saluted to the crew while stowing her dress blues in her locker. Her gaze lingered on him for one small second longer than the rest, but he noticed subtle tightness at the corner of her eyes, and it seemed to him that her smile was forced. Was she still upset about the ceremony? Or perhaps consumed by their mission. He knew her well enough now to know that she took her duties very seriously.

She veered off toward the cockpit, and he was alone. He scowled, his fingers skittering across his console. It was pathetic that a brief glimpse of her could improve his mood so drastically. It was pathetic that her absence should hurt in a nearly physical way, as if she'd slapped him instead. He'd hoped that though his feelings were painfully obvious to him, they wouldn't be to the world at large. Ashley had sunk that hope with glee.

" _Attention Normandy crew, this is Commander Shepard speaking,"_ she said through the intercom, her voice hitching a little at first.  _"For those of you who have not already been informed, Captain Anderson has resigned the command of this vessel and passed it to me, to better facilitate our search for Saren."_

The crew deck broke out into frenzied whispers, and Kaidan felt his own jaw drop. Captain Anderson resigned? He had a suspicion that this hadn't been Shepard's or Anderson's decision, and instead had been forced on them by Alliance Command or the Council. It was a huge insult to the Captain to strip him of his ship and command so late in his career, and they only would have done it as punishment.

" _We will honor the Captain and his leadership by carrying out our mission to the best of our ability, without letting this affect us too deeply. I promise to you all that I will do my best to live up to his example in the weeks and months to come."_

Perhaps it was because she spoke to her crew and not strangers, or she was hidden in the cockpit without having to face everyone listening, but her voice was powerful and smooth – perfectly assured. She sounded like a different person altogether from the woman who had sat across from him in the Citadel café, chewing her nails and stressing over the imminent Spectre induction ceremony.

" _Because Saren's plans affect not only the Alliance but us all, we've contracted the help of some non-Alliance personnel during the course of our mission. I ask you to treat them as allies, for that is what they are, and if we are going to defeat Saren and the geth, we will need the help of our allies._

" _Man your posts and prepare for launch. Thank you."_ There was a rustling noise, and then the intercom clicked off. The crew deck dissolved into whispers as the Normandy disengaged from the dock and took to the relay, but Kaidan said nothing, instead turning his entire focus to his duties.

He didn't like to think how he'd handle the stresses in his life if he didn't have a job. It would be resigning himself to constant anxiety that he had no outlet for, and as far as he was concerned, there wasn't a more disturbing prospect than that. But with a long list of tasks to complete each day and an ironclad routine that needed to be accomplished, he was able to put personal thoughts far away. He hadn't figured out how to get rid of them entirely, but he'd take what he could get at this point.

He lost track of time, so it took him a moment to hear Shepard clear her throat behind him, startling him so badly that he jumped. "Commander!" he exclaimed, spinning and offering her a hasty salute. "I'm sorry, I didn't see you."

She smiled a little. "At ease. Sorry to have scared you."

"Nah, you didn't. Just focused on my work."

"Do you have a minute?"

"Of course!"  _Smooth,_ his internal critic accused.  _Why not slobber all over her while you're at it?_ He shook away the thought before it could gain any ground, clearing away a neat stack of datapads at his workstation. "What's up?"

"Wanted to see if you'd met our new crewmates," she said, and she leaned against the bulkhead with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Met Garrus earlier. I saw Wrex come through before we took off. Haven't seen the quarian, though."

"Tali? She's hiding in engineering," Shepard said. "I think I've ruffled some feathers."

He let out a breath. "Ashley come talk to you then?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"She said she would," he said, shrugging.

"Ha. Right. She was pretty upset. Tried to keep a lid on it, but I could tell. It took me a moment to figure out why, but . . . did you know she's one of  _those_ Williams?"

Kaidan stared. "You're serious?"

"Yeah." Shepard sighed. "I didn't realize at first; she had to tell me straight out. So I suppose it goes without saying that her perspective on the issue of non-human allies is complicated."

"Hm." He looked away, shifting on his feet.

She fixed him with a knowing stare. "Permission to speak freely, Kaidan."

"None of it is right," he said. "It's not right to blacklist a descendent of a 'traitor'; they're hardly the same person. And the circumstances were not black and white; her grandfather did as well as he could in that situation. But . . . it's not right to hold a grudge forever. The rest of the Alliance made peace with the turians. Some of them grudgingly, but they did. No one is exempt from that."

"For what it's worth, I agree," Shepard told him. "But . . . I don't know. I told her I expect her to work together with our non-human crew members. Outside that, I don't have a say. None of us do."

"Yeah," he agreed.

"So . . ." she looked up at him, a small grin playing at her lips. "Part of me is wondering what the hell you're doing up so late."

"Late?" He checked the clock on his console and nearly groaned aloud when he noted the time; it was well into the sleep cycle, and he'd worked past his shift without even noticing. That was the power of avoidance, he supposed. "I . . . totally lost track of time."

"Yeah, I figured." Her grin widened. "I was going to fix something up for myself to eat. Biotic appetite and all. Well, and that burger made an unfortunate reappearance right after the ceremony." The words were hardly out of her mouth when her expression twisted in embarrassment, and she brought a hand up to her brow. "How about you forget I just said that?"

He grinned. "Said what, Commander?"

"Ah ha. Good one. You want to join me?"

Now that she mentioned it, he was pretty hungry. "I would."

He tried to fix something up for the both of them, but she insisted on making the meal herself. "I'm the Commander, I make the rules," she teased. "I run this ship with an iron fist, and when I say 'let me serve you', goddammit you let me serve you."

"Who'd be able to argue with that?" he grinned.

"Now you're getting it." She set a heaping bowl of cereal down in front of him, the spoon teetering precariously at its edge. "Enjoy, bon apetit, and all that."

They ate in amiable, if somewhat awkward silence while Kaidan mustered the fortitude to put his thoughts into words. It wasn't as if he struggled to confess his highly inappropriate feelings for her; as far as he was concerned, those were buried so deeply he'd have to be pretty good and drunk to even come close to mentioning them. "So . . . you did good today. Well, I mean. You know."

She looked up at him, momentarily stunned. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, of course not."

"I was a walking human disaster," she argued, brow arching into her bangs. "I consider it a small miracle that I was able to wait until in a bathroom before I lost my lunch. Not exactly the actions of a brave, heroic Spectre."

"You've got it all wrong," Kaidan said before he could stop himself.

"Really! Please, do tell." She folded her hands in her lap and cocked her head attentively, batting her eyes.

He forged ahead, though he was slightly unbalanced by her stare, the way her eyes caught the low light. "It's not very brave to face a situation that you have no fear of. It's . . . well, it's dumb. It's much more impressive to do something despite your fear." He trailed off, spinning the dregs of milk-logged cereal at the bottom of his bowl. "I mean, in my opinion, anyways."

But her expression had lost its mocking edge. She looked as if she honestly hadn't considered this, and it encouraged her greatly to realize it. "Maybe you're right," she allowed.

He chanced a glance up at her. "So . . . you really were sick?"

She groaned, burying her face in her palm, milky spoon and all. "Ugh. Probably shouldn't have said that."

"Too late, now."

"Enjoy it, Alenko. I'm never speaking again."

He paused. "Really?"

She glanced up at him. "Oh god, don't look at me like that. You'll give me a heart attack. Yes, I was sick. That burger took its final revenge."

"I shouldn't have ordered it for you."

"Aw. It wasn't bad going down." She smiled a little, and he noticed a small dimple at her left cheek. "I can't tell you the last time anyone's ordered me anything. Maybe my mom, before –"

"Before?" he prompted, startled by her suddenly crestfallen expression.

She let out a long breath. "Before she died."

"O-oh." He swallowed, partly so uncomfortable he wished he could change the subject and partly so affected by her pain that he was overcome by an odd, rogue impulse to fold her hand between his. The impulse changed as the silence grew longer, and he struggled for something to break the silence. "I'm so sorry."

She waved him off, her eyes a little bright. "It's fine. It's nothing."

"It's not nothing," he argued earnestly. "Not if it's upset you."

Her startled gaze snapped to his, and he realized a half-second too late that he'd said too much. Her expression was stripped of the practiced calm and good humor that was so common there. Instead, her features were bare, and he felt as if he could see through her pretenses straight to the truth she endeavored so desperately to hide. It stunned him what he saw there – grief, fear, and something he knew on an instinctive level, something mirrored nearly perfectly between them.

"I'm sorry, I-" he began, but she cut him off.

"It's fine." She stood suddenly, gathering her half-empty bowl and tossing it into the sink, where it clattered loudly. "I should go."

She was gone before he could say another word. With a sigh, he buried his face in his palm and seethed with frustrated embarrassment, and something more, something he desperately sought to suppress.

Well, he could probably kiss these highly enjoyable and stressful chats with Shepard goodbye. This was a careful dance they did now, and he'd blundered through it so badly he'd be lucky if she even glanced in his direction on duty, let alone sought him out privately to talk.

That would teach him to open his stupid mouth again.


	9. Chapter 9

The Mako hurtled through low atmo, rattling wildly as it cut a path to the surface. Kaidan watched the ground increase through the window slit with an air of resigned detachment, even when they slammed planetside so hard that they were all thrown violently into their restraints. He knew when he took off his armor after they filed back onto the Normandy that there would be a band of bruising across his chest from where the restraints had dug in.

This was pure routine, as far as he was concerned. The Mako was a tough old thing, but it handled like a drunken elephant.

"Shit," Shepard hissed, pulling the wheel desperately, so that they barely avoided a lake of molten rock. "Everyone all right back there?"

"I think you broke my sternum," Ashley wheezed. "Aren't they supposed to teach you to handle this thing?"

"I am handling this thing."

"There's a difference between passing and acing, Commander."

"How about you get up here and show me how it's done, wise ass?" Shepard retorted. "I think I'm doing pretty well, considering."

"Oh yeah, spectacularly well," Ashley mocked. "I'll be sure to thank God I have the use of my legs still."

"Come on! Lieutenant, back me up!"

He couldn't keep himself from shooting a grin at Ashley. "I don't know what the Chief is complaining about, but I'm fine back here."

"See?" Shepard said with a gloating smile. 

Ashley was not amused. "Of course he backs you up." She muttered something more under her breath, and though it was too quiet to be heard, Kaidan knew what she'd said. She'd thus far proved to be unable to let her wild theories and postulates go, no matter how off base they were. Or, in this case, no matter how vehemently denied.

As if to confirm his suspicions, Ashley shot him an irritated, knowing look. He resolved to avoid her for the rest of the trip beyond the strictures of duty.

"So remind me what we're doing on this sweaty rock," Ashley called, struggling to be heard over the roar of the Mako's engine.

"There's a Prothean ruin not far from the drop," Shepard answered. "Dr. T'Soni is fond of them. Hopefully she'll be nearby."

"Why do we need her again?'

"She's a Prothean expert. She might be able to help me figure out this vision."

"That's assuming she's a good scholar," Ashley said. "Just because she went to college doesn't mean she knows what she's talking about."

Shepard smirked. "Such a cynic."

"Pragmatic's the word you're looking for, ma'am."

"I don't think so," Shepard grinned. "And anyways, she's an asari. They have a long damn time to get nice and familiar with a subject. Supposedly, Dr. T'Soni is well renowned, even among the asari."

"Yeah, well, excuse me if that doesn't exactly soothe my skepticism."

"Yeah, yeah. Be polite."

"I am polite!" Ashley retorted indignantly.

Shepard snorted. "Right. Just keep the snarky asides to yourself, all right?"

"Yes, ma'am," was the grudging reply.

They fell silent as Shepard took a rocky ledge at a frightening pace, activating the gyros only just in time to keep them from splattering on the craggy mountainside. Shepard was doing well, considering this thing was impossible to manage at the best of times, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't a little afraid for his life at the moment.

"You think we can trust her?" Ashley said after the danger had passed.

"Chief . . ." Shepard warned.

"It's not about that!" Ashley retorted immediately. "I'm talking about how she's Matriarch Benezia's daughter. Maybe she's working with her mom and Saren." Ashley's frown deepened, making her appear much older. "Maybe they planned it like this, just to get on the inside, and then when the moment is right, she'll strike."

"I've considered that," Shepard said evenly. "But there isn't much she'll be able to do on the Normandy without my knowing. We'll keep an eye on her."

"Might need more than that, is all I'm saying, ma'am," Ashley said, her voice solemn. "Just keep that in mind."

"All right, Chief."

Kaidan knew Ashley had a point - you couldn't be too careful in this situation, where they fumbled around half-blind for an enemy that kept to dark places and only left signs of his passing through absence - but her mistrust still struck him as a little sad, even inappropriate for an Alliance solider. He didn't blame her, of course. Her entire career had been affected by her grandfather's decision; one he couldn't possibly have known would haunt the lives of his descendants. But it wasn't right to hold it against aliens, as if they were automatically the subject of mistrust, as if they were incapable of the same breadth so present in humanity.

He knew enough about that, himself. They were jerks and saints, just like any person.

Shepard made an irritated noise through clenched teeth. "Dammit," she muttered.

"What is it?" he asked her.

"We're going to have to go the rest of the way on foot," she explained, indicating a rockfall with only a slim crack open to the other side.

"No other way around?" Ashley asked.

"Do you see this lake of lava on either side of us?" Shepard said, gesturing. "It's walk or bust. Grab your gear."

She hit the hatch and swung out of the Mako, crunching on the gravel with Ashley not far behind. He thudded out behind them, stumbling a little and catching himself only at the last moment.

It had been hot and miserable in the Mako, but Therum was, if anything, worse. The molten rock on either side of them radiated enough heat to cook an egg in seconds, accompanied with the stomach-churning stench of sulfur. He felt a lance of pain shoot through his skull, and he clenched his teeth so hard he felt his jaw crack. Deep breaths usually worked, when the air didn't smell like a latrine that hadn't been cleaned in a few years.

It had gotten to the point where Kaidan found almost every little thing she did incredibly beautiful. Watching her fly out of the Mako with guns blazing had been akin to watching an intricate ballet. The way she looked as she leaned out of cover, taking careful aim and splattering geth with perfectly placed shots was frankly beyond words.

This was a problem. Distractions were problems, and they had no place on the field. So he pledged to avoid even looking at her unless it was strictly necessary, and even then he did not let his gaze linger. He was good at self-control and denial. He'd had a lot of practice.

Well, maybe he had been good at it before. Now, who could say?

"Hold up," Shepard called, holding up her hand for them to stop. The Prothean ruin loomed in the distance, remarkably well preserved for something of its age. And in front of it - "Colossus."

"Shit," Ashley muttered.

"You said it," Shepard agreed. "Keep to cover and don't do anything stupid."

"When do I do anything stupid?" Ashley argued, shooting them a cocky grin. "The very soul of prudence, over here."

"Cram it, Chief. Form up on me." But he saw that before she drew her rifle and turned her attention to the geth platoon, a small grin pulled at her lips.

They nearly made it to ground before the platoon caught sight of them. So much for the element of surprise, Kaidan thought wearily. The geth opened fire without another moment of hesitation, their hastily aimed shots splattering the ground just in front of them. He and Ashley made it to cover in time, but when he turned back he saw Shepard stumble, and the sight of it contracted before his eyes. The geth advanced, drew their weapons, and -

\- and the shots rippled against the barrier he conjured, strong with adrenaline and fear. He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet, and together they threw themselves behind cover just as the colossus opened fire. He realized only after it had happened how close she'd come to death, and how instinctual it had been to dive between Shepard and whatever attempted to harm her.

Despite their almost fatal misstep, they made quick work of the geth after that. Shepard hit an incoming wave of geth with a singularity and he shattered it with a warp, the resulting detonation echoing through the craggy landscape like a shot from a cannon. Ashley had no biotics or skill with tech to fall back on, but she didn't need it in the least; the Chief managed things with a rifle Kaidan hadn't even though possible. A colossus wasn't an easy foe, but they handled it in nearly record time.

Only when the construct had been reduced to a smoking wreck did Shepard turn back to him, and he felt an uncomfortable swooping in his gut, as if she'd pushed him off a ledge. "Thanks," she said quietly. "Only takes once, I guess."

"Ah - don't mention it," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "What was I going to do, leave you there?"

"I'm glad you didn't," she grinned. "Come on."

Ashley rolled her eyes, sidling up to him as Shepard strode into the ruin, disappearing a second later. "Smooth, LT," she muttered delightedly, so only he could hear. "You're a real prince charming."

"Will you keep it down?" he hissed. "What's wrong with you?"

"Oh, right, right. Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise or anything." Her gaze became sly. "Assuming she doesn't already know, that is."

Considering his luck, she probably already did, which made this exercise in futility even more humiliating and, well . . . futile. "Can you please just try to keep it to yourself? Please?"

"That's what I'm doing!" Ashley said, mock-outraged.

"No, I mean it. No more weird little asides when we should be working and paying attention to what's going on around us. No more bothering me about this while we're on duty. No more weird little asides in general. Think you can manage that, Chief?"

Ashley surprised him by looking a little hurt, and he wasn't so much of a monster that he didn't feel guilty. "Have it your way," she said, shouldering ahead.

"What are you two hissing about back there?" Shepard called back, and she rested the butt of her rifle on her hip.

"Nothing at all, ma'am," Ashley returned, brushing past without a backward glance.

Yeah, she was pissed. Fantastic.

He was an idiot. He should have known to put it in softer words, so it would be less an accusation and more a request. This ridiculous business with Shepard already put him on edge and left him so unbalanced that the slightest thing was nearly impossible to take in stride, and that was without Ashley's obvious delight at the situation. He'd apologize later, when the mission was completed. Not for diverting her focus back to their mission, but for being curt. There was no call for any of that. 

The Prothean ruin was in a state of partial excavation; by whom, Kaidan had no idea. They'd left digging equipment scattered through the various chambers like relics themselves, easily unearthed by clumsy visitors. The floors were bent and the walkways hanging askew, but somehow the elevators still worked. He figured it was nice change of pace not to have to go spelunking.

"Look," Shepard muttered to them, indicating ahead with the business-end of her rifle. A few meters away, a young asari woman hung suspended by a glowing energy field, completely immobilized, eyes wide with panic.

"Hello?!" she called, and her voice trembled. "Is anyone there?"

Shepard stepped forward. "Dr. T'Soni?"

"Yes! Oh, thank the goddess you're here. I need help!"

"I can see that," Shepard said. "How exactly did you get yourself in this . . . situation?"

"I was here researching the ruins," Dr. T'Soni explained hastily. "I must have activated some kind of fail safe. I would very much appreciate your assistance."

"Right," Shepard agreed, but Ashley shouldered ahead.

"Just a second, Commander," she said, and her eyes narrowed into slits. "I think we should be sure she's not working with Saren and her mother before we leap to her rescue."

"What?!" Dr. T'Soni cried. "I'm - I'm not with her! I haven't spoken to my mother in years, and whatever it is she's doing, I have no part of it." She fell silent for a moment. "Please don't leave me here."

"For the love of - we're not going to leave you here," Shepard said, shooting Ashley a hard look. "Let's just get out of this dangerous, crumbling ruin, and then we can figure out whether we should trust each other or not."

"I am fine with that!" Dr. T'Soni said eagerly.

"Of course you are," Ashley muttered.

With that, they set about freeing the wayward doctor from her imprisonment. Ashley was plainly not happy about the turn of events, and thought Kaidan thought she was being a bit harsh, he felt partly responsible for her affect. For her part, Shepard set about the task immediately, though at one point she turned back and met his gaze, a small smile playing at her lips. She shook her head and rolled her eyes, and he felt himself smiling in return.

"Kind of a mess, isn't she?" Shepard said as an aside, quiet enough that the doctor could not hear.

"An absent-minded professor; what are the odds?" he muttered.

She clapped her hands to her mouth, but a bit of laughter escaped regardless. "Now, now," she chided. "The same thing could have happened to us."

"What did I say?" Ashley called up to them. "Just because you graduated from some fancy college doesn't mean you're smart."

In the end, they decided to blast the ground under Dr. T'Soni with a mining laser, so they could go down and around to the chamber where she was trapped. Kaidan was a little wary about using high-powered ordinance in such an unstable ruin, but as they'd exhausted all other options, he kept his opinion to himself.

Shepard gestured for them to get back before hopping up to the laser controls, punching in the ignition code. The resulting blast nearly knocked the ground out from under them, and Shepard toppled to the ground in a heap. To his dismay, the ruins did not stop shuddering after the blast; instead, the rumbling seemed to increase, and Shepard's expression pulled down into horror.

"Move!" she shouted.

"Don't leave me!" Dr. T'Soni wailed.

"For the love of -" Shepard muttered, hardly audible over the din. She sprinted toward the doctor and entered the failsafe override with a short burst from her Omni-tool, the sparks briefly lighting the darkness and illuminating her features, her eyes narrowed in concentration. "Come on!"

Together, with the wayward doctor in tow, they made a mad dash for the exit. Huge pieces of Prothean architecture came crashing down around them, and he only narrowly missed one section that would have struck him in the head had he paused for half a second. He kept his eyes on Shepard, pushing himself faster and faster to keep pace with her, a streak of red in the darkness. Maybe he should have denied it, but the second a piece of rubble came anywhere near her, he'd hurl it away with a biotic push faster than she'd even be able to see.

When they made it to the surface, he held his knees and gasped for air; he hadn't realized how fast they'd been running at the time, and now that the danger was past, it felt as if his lungs were trying to escape his body. Ashley followed suit, clutching her chest. "Jesus christ," she muttered. "Ugh."

Dr. T'Soni turned back toward the ruin, now little more than a smoldering wreck where once had been a treasure trove of Prothean history. "What a waste," she lamented.

Kaidan considered it a miracle that Ashley didn't haul off and smack her in the face.

* * *

Shepard pinched her brow. "The loss of the Prothean ruin was inevitable," she explained patiently, for what felt like the tenth time. "It was either that or leave Dr. T'Soni to die. We had no other choice."

"There is always another choice, Commander," Councilor Valern said, his large eyes narrowed.

Shepard swallowed her temper. Like he would know! Put up in his cushy office, where the biggest problem he had to worry about was whether his tea was too hot and what time his assistant would arrive. It was laughable to think of those lily-gilled Councilors in any kind of life or death situation, with two shitty options staring them in the face and about two seconds to make the choice. Maybe Councilor Sparatus would have had an idea- even turian politicians came from some kind of military service. Not the others, though.

"Yes, well, I will endeavor to do better, Councilors," Shepard said through her teeth.

"Very good, Commander. I would suggest you investigate the Exo-Geni colony at Feros next. There have been some reports of geth activity there, and you may find a lead on Saren."

"I will," she said, bowing her head before switching off the comm. She hadn't been expecting a pat on the back, exactly, but she'd accomplished her directive without any casualties, and in her mind that spelled a success. The loss of the ruin was unfortunate, but it wasn't likely there was anything important to be learned there anyway - the Council had known about that particular ruin for thousands of years and never found anything of note. Shepard suspected the Councilors had merely seen it as an opportunity to give her a hard time. Well done, them. Now she was pissed.

"You know, you can always hang up on them," Joker suggested on the comm. "That'll teach 'em."

"No, it won't," Shepard sighed. "Then they'll have something concrete to be mad about, instead of some trumped up bullshit they pulled out of their asses on the fly."

"Yeah, good point." She could almost see his cocky smirk. "Would feel pretty good though."

"It sure would."

"Heh. Orders, Commander?"

"Plot a course for Feros. I think we can handle one more mission before we need to head back to provision."

"Aw."

"They can't all end in shore-leave, Joker."

"Yeah, but a guy can dream, can't he?"

Shepard grinned. "Hop to it, Flight Lieutenant."

"Yes, ma'am."

It would have been nice to take a bit of a break, though. Not as if this mission had been particularly difficult - aside from the crumbling ruin death trap they had all just narrowly escaped - but there was just something so refreshing about twenty-four hours of leave; just enough to find a good bar and have a few drinks, or whatever particular fancy struck.

She'd be lying if she said the prospect of drinks with Lieutenant Alenko didn't entice and intrigue her.

Shepard sighed, pinching her brow. Her head hurt, a byproduct from the strange meld Liara had performed. It had been in the interest of learning more about the vision Shepard had seen from the Prothean beacon, at least according to Liara. Naturally, the doctor had been fascinated and a little overwhelmed, wobbling off toward the med bay after profusely apologizing for her lack of insight. So that was a lost cause for now. All Shepard had to show for the uncomfortable experience was a steadily increasing headache.

A flash of inspiration took hold at that moment, and she strode from the comm room, closing the door behind her and trying for nonchalance. Maybe she'd see how Kaidan was doing before she turned in for the evening. Maybe not.

Oh, who was she kidding.


	10. Chapter 10

It often annoyed Shepard that man was not yet able to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other in the span of a few minutes. The laws of physics cared little for the boredom and impatience of one twenty-nine year old Commander, so she was forced to make do with a thousand distractions.

They were due to arrive on Feros in five days, and already her patience had been completely exhausted. She'd cleaned her cabin as well as she could manage before promptly undoing all her work., resurfacing in a pile of fatigues and uniform separates. She'd caught up on the reports she'd meant to file for the Alliance a few days ago; odds and ends, leftover transfer paperwork. It did not occupy her for an endless span of days, like she wanted; instead, she finished in two and a half hours.

So really, all that was left to do was annoy her fellow crewmates.

When prompted, Pressley waved her off, stern brows pulled low over his eyes. The transfer had unnerved him, she noticed, as had the arrival of a sizable number of non-human crewmates. He was old school, and a lot of the old hands had problems with aliens, especially turians. Ashley did too, come to that. Shepard saluted and left the old navigator alone.

She ducked into the cockpit. "Hey, Joker," she said easily. "How we doing?"

"Oh, you know," he said, his voice twisting on the sarcasm. "Just trying to fly a frighteningly expensive prototype frigate through the galaxy without slamming into anything dangerous or screwing up bad enough that we're all smashed into paste before you can say goodbye. Nothing major."

So, Joker wasn't in the mood, either. "Right," Shepard said, disheartened. "I'll leave you to it."

"That's real nice of you."

It was easier when she wasn't in charge, Shepard thought bitterly. She'd had a task of her own and set to it. Now that she was in charge, her primary task was to oversee the others. And the problem with commanding the Normandy was that her crew had been handpicked as the best of the best. For everyday nonsense, they didn't need guidance. They were just fine on their own.

Indeed; they saw attempts to check in as distractions. Granted, that's what they were, but that wasn't the point.

It took her about three minutes to decide to head to the crew deck. She was avoiding that general area because a certain Lieutenant was there, and after much deliberation she'd decided not to tempt the fates. Fraternization was not looked on kindly by the Alliance, and the sad fact of the matter was she was Kaidan Alenko's superior. That was that; end of story.

Or was it?

She shook that little nagging voice away. It was stupid and traitorous, and it wanted to get her discharged, apparently.

So she'd avoid Kaidan; for now, anyway. It was only a matter of time before she caved, she knew; he was stupid and magnetic and thoughtful and handsome, and a thousand other little things she'd had no idea she liked. The urge would strike her and she would seek him out, all thoughts toward consequence forgotten. She was like a junkie; itching for a fix. Appropriate that he was the drug in this out of control hyperbole.

After further deliberation she decided to check in on Liara. She felt a little guilty for being brusque and impatient with her when they'd found her on Therum. Shepard was a different woman on the field; or at least, she tried to be. She inhabited her focus, the grim space of the battlefield, and manners were the first thing to go when she went there.

Shepard nodded at Dr. Chakwas before pushing into the back office, only to find Liara pacing the length of the room, her eyes narrowed in thought. She nearly jumped a mile when her gaze drifted to the door. "Shepard!" she said, clutching her chest. "I didn't see you."

"Everything all right?" Shepard asked her, a little wary.

"Oh - yes. Thank you." Liara resumed her pacing. "This is a wonderful ship."

"I think so, too."

There was stilted silence as Liara avoided looking at Shepard for too long, her pale gaze darting away at regular intervals, almost like clockwork. "Did you need me for something?" Liara finally ventured.

"Just wanted to see how you were doing. Things got pretty heated on Therum."

Liara froze, blinking up at Shepard. "Heated - was that a joke?"

"It sure was."

"Oh. Ha! That's a good one. I'm very fond of puns."

Shepard couldn't help a smile. Dr. T'Soni was nervous and skittish as a newborn colt, but there was something extremely endearing about her. "I am too."

"Of course. Obviously, right?" Liara resumed her pacing. "Anyway, I'm doing quite well. Dr. Chakwas is very knowledgeable of asari physiology, and she was able to help me very much."

"She's the best," Shepard said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "She fixed me up after a Prothean beacon messed me up pretty bad."

"I'd heard about that," Liara said, blinking owlishly. "I couldn't believe it, at first. But you must realize how lucky you are! To have even a small glimpse of the Prothean culture; why, I would suffer anything for that much. Regardless of the cost."

Shepard frowned. "You would, would you? I suffer terrifying, incomprehensible visions every night, and the things I see often resurface during the day when I'm trying to work, or maybe trying to have a conversation with a friend. If I knew what it was they were trying to tell me, maybe I'd think it was worth it. But right now? Hard to think that."

Liara looked as if Shepard had slapped her, as if she hadn't considered the implications of her words. "Oh - no, I didn't mean - please, forgive me," she stammered, flushing.

Instantly, Shepard felt guilty. "No, I'm sorry. You didn't mean any harm." She peered closer. "You didn't, did you? Because if you did, I might have to stick you on latrine duty."

"I- I didn't! Please-"

"Easy, there," Shepard grinned. "I was joking."

"O-oh. Ha. That's a good one, Commander."

"No, it wasn't." Shepard rubbed her chin ruefully. "I forget that you're not technically Alliance, and I can't order you around when you irritate me."

"Am I irritating you?!" Liara looked utterly horrified at the thought.

"No! No, you're not. Poor choice of words."

"Ah- right. That happens to me too, quite often. My mother used to say I could never lie successfully, since more often than not I think aloud. It's very efficient though, at a site or in study. Speaking aloud makes things more solid in my mind, and if I say it, I can remember saying it and therefore summon the information through memory. My mother said . . . " She trailed off, looking stricken.

"You haven't talked to your mother in a long time?" Shepard asked her quietly.

"No," Liara said, suddenly somber. "I-I know what they're saying she's done. That she's with Saren now. That she's helping him. And I wonder how she could have done something so foolish and terrible. Allied herself with a dangerous, bloodthirsty madman. Has she changed? Or . . . or have I just never noticed what she's like before?"

Shepard knew it was not smart to trust this asari straight out of the gate. It wasn't prudent to let a heartbroken face and heartbroken words sway her pity into trust. And yet, that's exactly what happened. Shepard took one look into Liara's eyes and knew that her pain was as genuine as her words. She held Liara's shoulder gently. "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't say I know what it's like to lose your mother in that way, but . . . but I do know what it's like to lose one in general. If that helps at all."

Liara swiped at her eyes, which had become very bright. "It- it does help. Thank you." She was quiet for a moment, weighing her words. "You said you lost your mother?"

Shepard hadn't brought it up because she wanted to talk about it - in fact, most days she preferred to forget. That fight, the call that had come a week later, the gaping void in her life in the shape of Hannah Shepard; too large for even death to hold. She shrugged. "Yeah. Happened about a year ago," she said, affecting nonchalance.

But somehow, Liara seemed to understand. "I'm so sorry," she said softly.

Shepard shrugged again. "Thanks." She cleared her throat. "Anyway. Just wanted to make sure you were doing all right. You were pretty rattled. And I know this whole thing is a lot to take in. Especially for -"

"For . . . ?"

"For a civilian," Shepard clarified. "No offense."

"None taken," Liara said. "Though you should know; I'm very much tougher than I look."

"I stand corrected, then," Shepard grinned.

She made to leave when Liara spoke again, reaching out to touch Shepard. "I'd - I'd like to stay on and help you stop Saren, if that's okay," she said. "I mean it. I'm a skilled biotic and rather a decent shot with a pistol, I might add. It's . . . well, it's the least I can do. Considering what my mother has done."

"I'd appreciate your help, Dr. T'Soni."

"Please; it's just Liara." If anything, her smile seemed to become shy. "I'd like it if we were friends. I - I mean, if we were friendly. No, I mean - augh." She trailed off, horrified at what she'd said. "I don't know what I mean."

Shepard took pity on her; partly because her awkwardness and exuberance were endearing, partly because she was lonely and could use a friend who wasn't wrapped up in a thousand degrees of protocol, partly because despite logic, Shepard knew she could trust her. "I'd like to be friends, Liara," she said, holding out her hand for the asari to shake.

Liara looked stunned for a moment, as if she couldn't quite believe things had gone her way. When she took Shepard's hand and pumped it exuberantly, Shepard noticed that her hand was almost hot to the touch.

* * *

Kaidan mulled over his apology for half a day, pulling apart the words and reassembling them in the exact order that was necessary. Sure, Ashley had been insensitive and kind of a jerk, but that didn't mean he should have responded in kind. He felt guilty; she hadn't meant any harm, but he had. That was unforgivable.

He found her in the shuttle bay, knocking the stuffing out of the punching bag one of the requisition officers had placed there. The idea was to provide an outlet, and Ashley was getting every bit of mileage out of that thing as she could. His hopes of apologizing without bloodshed were quickly fading.

"Hey Chief," Kaidan said awkwardly. "Do you have a minute?"

"What was that?" Ashley called bitterly. "I couldn't hear you over the bullshit." She sank her fist into the bag so hard that it spun around on its chain, slamming back into her.

He suppressed a wave of bitterness. "I wanted to apologize for being an asshole. If you're more interested in being pissed, I guess I'll leave you alone."

"Yeah, that's about what I'd expect from you at the moment," Ashley said, rolling her eyes. But she turned to face him, and he saw that the heat of her anger had faded. "I kind of want to leave you hanging for a good, long while. But knowing you, you've probably marinated in guilt for the last few hours, and I'd be a real asshole if I let you simmer in that."

Kaidan wasn't thrilled that she'd learned his number so quickly. Shepard had too, come to think of it. They were either very observant or he was more of an open book than he'd thought. "Yeah, well," he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Come here, dummy. I forgive you," Ashley said, and this time she grinned for real. "But let's get something straight."

"Here we go," Kaidan muttered.

"I like making my little asides. 'Bout you and the Commander. Partly because I think you two are very cute and adorable, and partly because you should know how obvious you're being, since I'm only ever as blatant as you."

What?" Kaidan gaped at her.

"Just what I said. You're not being cagey. If you care at all about regs, you'll either wise up or clam up. Got me?"

Yeah, he was pretty well acquainted with the regs. They fought it out with his thoughts of Shepard well into the night, one tumbling right after the other. He'd think of her curves, then the regs. Her smile, then the regs. That steely jaw masking the wounded look in her eyes, then bam! Regs.

It was to the point where he thought of them as a physical entity in his life. A stern, straight-backed man that looked a lot like his father, brows pulled low, lips shaping the word 'disappointment'.

He was aware how crazy that was.

"Yeah, I got you," Kaidan said finally, heaving the words like a sigh.

"Hey, now," Ashley said, punching his shoulder. "I'm not saying you need to put a lid on it. I'm just saying you need to be careful."

"Right." He looked down at her, met her suddenly earnest gaze. "What's to stop you from saying anything if I do take your advice?"

"Seriously? What kind of person do you think I am?" Ashley demanded incredulously.

"I-"

"Just because I'm telling you to be careful doesn't mean I'd blow the whistle. I mean . . . I might if I thought you guys weren't doing your jobs. But the two of you? I don't even think fucking each other's brains out day and night would keep you from doing your duty," Ashley equivocated.

Kaidan almost choked on his tongue. Truthfully, he avoided thinking about Shepard in any state of nakedness, because once he started down that path, he was resigning himself to a long, uncomfortable night of painful desire. "That's . . . good to know, I guess." He cleared his throat. "I mean, if I had any plans on doing anything about it. Which I don't."

Ashley shrugged. "Sure; keep telling yourself that. Who knows; maybe you'll eventually convince yourself."

"You don't sound convinced, though."

"Nope." Ashley grinned as she unwound the bindings on her knuckles. "I know how these things work. Go with it; it's bad. Try and deny it; it's worse. You're fucked either way, LT."

"You don't know that," Kaidan argued, but Ashley shook her head.

"Yeah, I do. I know how it goes, especially with buttoned-up, silent types like the both of you. You're in the business of suppression, and it doesn't work that well for you but you do it anyway. So when you reach your breaking point, it's totally inevitable. It was the minute you saw each other."

Kaidan frowned. "Sounds like you're speaking from experience."

"Maybe I am," Ashley shrugged. "You could probably guess how it ended, too."

"The fact that it ended is indication enough."

Her eyes hooded for a moment, like clouds passing over the sun. "Yeah."

They both fell silent, each embroiled in their sadness and concerns, which Kaidan was surprised to learn was mutual. "Well . . . listen." He rubbed an itch at the back of his neck, shifting from foot to foot. "Thanks for . . . well, you know. I appreciate it."

"Now you do," Ashley said, grinning, earlier sadness all but forgotten. "You're a good guy, LT. She's lucky to have caught your eye."

"I'd say it's more the other way around, but thanks."

"See; there you go. Being endearing." She shouldered past him, slinging her gym bag over her shoulder. "Better put a stop to that or I'll get some ideas."

Now he knew she was teasing him. "Can't have that," he said dryly.

He hung around the punching bag well after she'd gone. If he'd had any duties left for the day, he would have taken care of them, but the sad fact was that it was incredibly easy to accomplish of things en route. Instead of losing himself in busy work, pushing away his thoughts through active hands, he had to confront every single thought that lurked in the darkened corners of his mind, waiting for the most inopportune moments to resurface.

There was Shepard; she loomed large these days, throwing light and casting shadows. He hadn't figured out what to do with her, and he was no closer to a solution than he was the moment they'd met. For the moment, he'd decided to avoid her, the better to keep from making a fool of himself. A small part of him also hoped that distance would make it more difficult to grow attached. Ashley had seen right through that, though. But he knew the moment she showed up, these half-hearted plans would evaporate. It was a waste hashing them out at all, when he knew they'd crumble like poorly laid brick.

There were the implications should they decide to throw caution to the wind and pursue their feelings. (That was assuming she even felt the same way. He wasn't so sure of that, yet). There were the regs, the requirements, the rigid strictures that comprised their shared life in the military. Those regs didn't exist needlessly in a vacuum; they were there to keep officers from compromising their judgment. When on the field and two seconds between life and death, that judgment needed to be uncorrupted, kept clean. No question.

There were the older memories of things he wished he could forget. Vyrnnus, Rahna. The sound a neck makes as it's severed. The exact amount of force required to achieve such a result.

And now there was Saren and the vague, wordless menace his plans represented. They didn't know everything yet, but that didn't stop Kaidan from worrying about it.

He had no idea how much time had passed when he heard Shepard approach. It seemed odd that he was already able to recognize her by the cadence of her paces, one after another as they resonated off the riveted floor. Measured, hesitant, a bit unsure; he heard her pause for just a moment before resuming, this time with more confidence.

It almost registered as pain to look up and meet her gaze. Hers was a kind of beauty that hurt when you looked at it too long, much like the sun. He though that her face was proof enough of God; something so beautiful could not have happened by chance.

"Hey," Shepard said. "You, uh, working out?"

He saw her wince as soon as the words left her mouth. "Ah - no. I was just . . . thinking."

Smooth. If Ashley had been there, she'd laugh herself stupid. For her part, Shepard did not seem to notice that was completely and utterly devoid of anything resembling intelligence or charisma. A piece of driftwood held more appeal. "Yeah, you looked pretty intent."

"I've finished everything for the day. Not much else to do while en route."

The veneer of awkwardness vanished in that instant. "Oh my god; tell me about it," she said, pinching her brow. "So picture you're the Commander of the ship, and the crew are all the best the Alliance has to offer. In down times like these, they don't need your help or your input. So instead, you just wander around, trying to find some way to be useful."

"Any luck?"

She grinned at him. "Talked with Liara for a bit. Feel kind of sorry for her."

"Yeah?"

Shepard's easy grin faded. "She's hurting over her mom. I understand that." She gestured around them. "And this business. I imagine a military instillation is kind of intimidating if you're a civilian."

"Can't even remember what that's like," he said.

"Right? I wasn't even a civilian when I was a civilian, if that makes any sense at all. Grew up military, making trouble on my mom's ship." Her smile trembled a bit. "Never mind."

He got the impression that Liara wasn't the only one suffering over her mother. "Right."

"So, look. I'm bored and antsy as hell, and I thought I'd smack the punching bag around for a bit. Just to do something, you know? But . . . well, you're here, and you'd hit back. Better than that old punching bag, anyway."

Her enthusiasm was so charming, it made his chest ache. "Is that a request?"

"More like a challenge. If you're up to trading blows with your old Commander."

"I'm pretty sure I'm older than you are."

"Well, you know; rank adds age. Or something." That beautiful smile took a predatory edge; her eyes became hawkish. "If you're scared, just say so."

"Like hell, I'm scared," he said hotly.

"Then come on," she taunted.

As they squared off, he was aware of a dim voice in the back of his thoughts, one that warned him this was not a good idea. It wasn't that he was afraid of losing; he was already fairly sure she'd be able to lay him flat without much effort. But he knew what proximity would do toward this unmanageable feeling that took every small allowance as permission to grow. He knew futility didn't need additional opportunity to take root.

Shepard landed the first punch; a solid blow to his gut. Before he could retaliate, she'd danced away, her fists held up defensively, elbows tucked in tight. Better than fast, she was nearly reflexive as she fought; as if somehow she'd gained access to his thoughts and recognized them before even he had.

"Come on, Alenko," she teased. "Put up a bit of a fight, why don't you."

"You got it."

How could she have known that her words had taken a double meaning? How could she have known that she saw through him already, and though he needed to fight, he couldn't? He didn't want to, not anymore.

It was just as much of a mistake as he'd feared. She was grace embodied perfectly; an avatar of surety and skill. He'd never seen anyone manage to dodge a punch in a way that was beautiful, and yet she accomplished it with aplomb. And it seemed to him that time unhinged; lurching forward suddenly, only to shudder nearly to a stop, so that all he saw was the tendons taunt in her fists, the supple muscles in her arms, a bit of sweat glistening at the hollow of her neck.

When he finally landed a blow, it stunned the both of them; not only that he'd managed to break through her defenses, but that the feel of her taut stomach against his hand sent a hot wave of desire running through him, pure want that nearly knocked him off his feet.

And suddenly those images broke their restraints, rushing at him like a river that had broken its banks. Every dream, every idle imagining. Speculation that was both horrible and thrilling. There was the need to slide his hands up her shirt and know the feel of her skin, the exact texture of it, the weight of her breast. And how shameful - to be nearly overcome while she fixed him with that horribly penetrating gaze, her own eyes widening as she undoubtedly realized what he had.

"I- good match," he said quickly, backing away from her, from those beautiful, questioning eyes. "Migraine."

He fled like a coward. He found it mildly hilarious that he could look down the barrel of a gun and feel no fear, but gaze too long at a beautiful, fascinating woman and he ran for the hills. But it was futile, just like Ashley said. More than futile. For a person like Kaidan, who clung to rules like a dying man clings to life, it was terrifying. It was wrapped up in the sick realization that he could do nothing about this, no matter how he struggled; that he was nearly slave to how he saw her.

As he passed into his room, he nearly collided with a crewman whose name he didn't know. The man muttered about the 'high-strung jackass' as he pushed out into the crew deck, and Kaidan suppressed mad laughter.

He didn't know the half of it.

 


	11. Chapter 11

It was becoming something of a routine for Shepard to wake up in the middle of the sleep cycle with a raging headache, her heart pounding desperately against her ribs. The Prothean visions had corrupted into dreams, and though only whirling threads remained in the waking hours, they were enough to torment her. She lurched upright with a shaking hand to her chest, as if she hoped to control the frenzied beating of her heart, but it was for nothing.

With a sigh, she hunched over and cradled her aching head in her hands. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten a straight night of sleep.

There was nothing for it now. She was up and her mind was racing. This whole sleep thing probably wasn't going to happen for at least another sixteen hours. Just as well; the moment she stood, her stomach let out an audible rumble, as if a small creature sat in her gut and scraped away at her ribs with long talons.

The prospect of a midnight feast brightened her outlook considerably. She may be exhausted and cranky and harassed by a head full of sharp nightmares, but at least she wouldn't go hungry.

She dressed cursorily and tried not to think about anything except for the fact that they would arrive at Feros tomorrow, and finally this interminable boredom would end. Preliminary reports spoke of trouble with the colony, and while she knew it was horrible to be excited about that, she couldn't really stop that thought once it had worked its way into her brain. Trouble meant something to fix, and she was pretty good at that.

She was better helping people and doing things. Idle times bred nightmares, boredom, weak thoughts about a handsome man and a dead mother - thoughts of them suspended in her nightmares as if by puppet strings, thoughts of them broken, howling, hollow in the wind, thoughts -

She pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the gasp. There had to be some kind of service on the Citadel that could wipe the brain of stuff like this. She was a damn soldier - a Commander! And now a Spectre. She didn't have the time for this kind of weak, whiny crap. She pulled in a deep breath and tried to think how her mother would handle this.

With strength, undoubtedly. She'd stare down those nightmares coolly and ignore them until they'd slink away out of shame - the failure of being unable to affect too great to bear. She'd keep herself tranquil, placid as the surface of an unbroken lake. She'd throw herself into her duties without reservation.

Shepard didn't know if she could manage the strength part, but she could manage the duties part. She was good at that. Pretty good, anyway.

She thudded down the stairs to the crew deck, expecting it to be empty and silent as a tomb. She should have known better, honestly; when was she ever alone on this ship, even when in her cabin? There, she was harassed and hounded by her thoughts of the man; here, she was harassed by the man himself.

(Maybe harassed was a bit unfair. He hadn't done anything to her except be handsome and interesting. The fault lay completely with her overactive brain.)

Kaidan hunched over the stove with a spatula in hand, prodding some eggs in the pan with patience Shepard could not even begin to imagine emulating. He hummed tunelessly under his breath, and though it quickly became apparent that he was tone deaf, she found herself smiling at the sound of it. He really had a lovely voice.

It took her a moment to realize that she'd lurked around the corner of the crew deck far longer than was acceptable - if he'd noticed her the moment she'd come down, he'd know her immediately for some kind of weird stalker or something, and the thought filled her with vague horror. Cutting her losses, she strode from behind the wall with every bit of nonchalance she could muster.

"Evening, Lieutenant," she said amicably. "Or morning. Whatever."

"Probably closer to morning," Kaidan said, lifting his free hand to salute.

"Nah, none of that. Right now I am not your Commander; I am merely a very tired, very hungry woman absolutely enchanted by the smell of whatever it is that you're making."

Kaidan grinned "Omelets. Would you like me to make you one?"

"If you did, I would swear myself to you for as long as I live."

"That's . . . not exactly necessary," Kaidan said, chuckling nervously. "But I'll make you one anyway."

"Here I am; swearing myself to you for the rest of my life," she teased, half-horrified with her nerve. "And there's nothing you can do about it."

She watched him cook, and since his back was turned she made no effort to curb her gaze. It was lovely to be able to look at him unguarded, for it felt like she'd never had a chance to do so in the time she'd known him. He had a body that was made for appreciation - the lines of his back strong and powerful, slightly curved as if he bore a weight on his broad shoulders; the graceful muscles of his forearms that tensed and banded as he cooked. She counted seven freckles there before he turned around, bearing a plate piled high with the omelet.

"You are amazing," she enthused as he set the plate down in front of her. "Thank you so much."

"You haven't even tasted it yet," he admonished, though with a little smile. "It could be awful."

"How could it be, when it smells so good?" She shot him a cheeky grin. "I think you're just being modest."

"What could have possibly given you the impression that I'm modest?"

"You are! Insufferably so, I might add. Now shush. This looks amazing and I'd like to enjoy it properly without you hemming and hawing in my ear."

"Can't have that," he grinned.

Contrary to his protests, the omelet was just as good as she thought it would be, perhaps even better. She thought it would be rude to inhale the whole thing in three bites, but she couldn't control the moan of bliss that came out of her mouth. "My god. The world lost an amazing chef when you joined the Alliance."

He shrugged modestly. "I'm sure you're exaggerating."

"Oh my god, please don't ruin the religious moment I'm having with this omelet by being insufferably humble." She took another bite, chewing with relish. "I will never eat again, for it will never be as good as this."

"Please don't tell me I'm going to be responsible for you starving to death," he said.

"No promises."

It was so effortless between them that Shepard only remembered at that moment that things were supposed to be awkward; they'd sparred and it had resonated oddly with her, a slamming force of desire that nearly bowled her over the closer he came, until she could nearly feel his heat on her own skin. Now that she remembered, she fell silent, twirling her fork in the mess she'd made of the omelet. If she met his gaze now, she would blush and the ruse would be over.

Kaidan cleared his throat, looking away. "I, uh . . . I'm sorry about earlier."

"Oh, it was fine," she said, dismissing the strangeness between them with a wave of her hand. "It was nothing."

Such a bold lie! She half-expected him to catch it with his hands, like vermin that grows too bold the longer it goes without being apprehended. To her amazement, he forged ahead. "I - had a migraine, it was -"

"Really, it's fine." She swallowed the bite of omelet she'd been chewing. "I wasn't offended or upset or - or anything, really. Don't worry about it."

"All right." He was quiet for a long moment, studying his hands, and the longer he went without speaking the harder it was for her to contain the impulse to study those same, beautiful hands. There was a large freckle on the left one, and his fingers were oddly graceful, tapered like a pianist's. She couldn't look away.

"Mind if I ask what has you up so early?" he ventured finally.

She cleared her throat, suddenly shy. "It's . . . god. Not as if you could find me any more ridiculous, after you saw my display at the Spectre induction ceremony, is it?"

"You were fine," he said quietly.

"It's the beacon," she said. "The Prothean visions. I can't get them out of my head. I - I dream about them, now. The scraping and screaming, so loud that I wake up with a splitting headache. And I think if I knew what any of them meant, it would be easier to dismiss them. But all I get is the terror that makes it so hard to breathe that I think I'm having a heart attack." She realized she was holding her hand to her chest only after she'd spoken.

"God," Kaidan whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"What do you have to be sorry for?" she asked without thinking.

He was quick to remind her. "If I'd kept my distance, you wouldn't have had to pull me away. If I'd used my brain, you wouldn't have -"

"Hey," she cut him off gently. "None of that. None of that beating yourself up for something that isn't your fault business, okay? Not when I'm around."

He shook his head. "Sorry, Commander."

"Ah ah - what did I say?"

A grudging grin pulled at his lips. "Sorry, Shepard."

"That's better." She swallowed. "It's nothing you need to punish yourself for, all right? I would do it again, if you were in trouble. I'd probably do anything, including stupid heroics, to keep anything from happening to you."

"Shepard?"

"I - I mean, since you're my crew. Can't have anything happening to the LT, now can we?"

"Ah - right. Same goes for the Commander," he added, rubbing the back of his neck.

God. If she wasn't careful, she'd grab the front of his shirt and kiss him stupid right that moment. It was bad enough that he was devastatingly handsome and inexplicably attractive, but combined with his quiet kindness was nearly enough to overwhelm her. She caught herself holding her breath, and let it out in a trembling exhale, trying not to look at him.

"Bah," she said, waving him off. "Some Commander I am, these days."

"You give me such a hard time for being modest and self-deprecating," he pointed out. "And yet you're even worse than I am, with even less reason to be."

"You trying to make me blush, Kaidan?"

"No," he said at first, but then paused. "Is it working?"

"Maybe."

"I'm serious, though," he said. "You know that you're a hero, and that green recruits from every branch of the Alliance look up to you as the standard of excellence; even more so now that you're a Spectre. And you know you're good." He smiled a little, and the sight of it hit her like a blow to the gut. "I've seen you in action, now. I know that you know you're good."

"Oh yeah? How's it that you know that?"

"You move from objective to objective with complete confidence that you won't let yourself down. When you see an obstacle, you handle it with the full expectation that you'll see yourself to the other side. When you give a command, you don't question the veracity or need for it." He paused. "Not on the field, anyway."

How was it that he'd seen through to her bones so easily? As if all he had to do was look at her with those brown eyes to know the contents of her thoughts, her fears, her desires. She shifted in place, suddenly very uncomfortable. "If only the rest of life was as easy as the field."

"Bit backwards, don't you think?"

"Think? I know it's backwards! Doesn't really change things, though." She sighed. "You're not the first to notice it, and I doubt you'll be the last."

"Why is it, do you think?"

Shepard shrugged again. "Damned if I know," she said. "Maybe because I grew up on a military ship, the military side of life is easy for me. The life side of life is . . . not. Not for me. So I look at a civilian, and yeah they wouldn't be able to handle the kind of life that I do - saving colonies, taking out hostiles, securing objectives - but they'd be able to handle nightmares, probably. Or they'd be able to function in a way where they don't constantly second-guess every thought and desire that goes through their head."

"Do you do that?" Kaidan asked her softly.

"I suppose I do. With the thoughts, anyway," she amended. Desires too, but she wasn't about to confirm that to the object of her desire, looking at her with such compassion that it registered as physical pain not to take his hand between hers and savor the warmth of it.

"You shouldn't," he told her. "Not that I have any right to tell you what to do or anything."

"Calm down, Kaidan," she said, smiling. "Say what you meant."

"I don't think you should second-guess yourself like you do. I may not know you very well, but in my opinion you're remarkable. You're perceptive, intelligent, and funny as hell. And you should get used to that fact."

"That I'm remarkable? Or that you think I am?"

He colored slightly. "Both."

Dear god, he was trying to kill her. She cleared her suddenly very tight throat. "Thank you," she managed. "Let's change the subject."

"If you like."

"I've told you why I'm haunting the crew deck as ass-o-clock. Now it's your turn."

If anything, the color on his cheeks darkened, and she wondered what it was that embarrassed him badly enough to elicit such a physical reaction. "I . . . needed a walk, I guess. I was hungry. Couldn't sleep. You know - the usual."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. And . . . well. Weird dreams."

"You and me both, then. Want to share?"

"They're not anything worth sharing, really," he hedged. "Just couldn't sleep after."

"Yeah, that sounds familiar."

He seemed to steel himself, then, for he cleared his throat and continued on as if nothing had happened. "So it was the dreams and . . . well. Being a night owl has always been my thing. At BAaT I was last to go to sleep and first to wake up. I'd roam around, read, cook."

"Get out. Really?"

"I swear!"

"That's so weird," she said. "I've always been the same way. Probably because my mom was the same way; she'd work well after I fell asleep, and she'd be up and going before I woke up the next morning. And since she was so busy during the day cycle, I learned to mimic her habits, so I could spend time with her when things were slower."

He smiled at her, and the sweetness of it nearly stopped her heart. "Sounds like you were a cute kid."

"Ha! And then I grew up and it all went so wrong!"

"Come on," he laughed. 

She nearly choked on the glass of water she'd been drinking, and it was only an act of will that kept her from spraying it all over the table. "You think I'm gorgeous, huh?"

She'd done it now. He rubbed the back of his neck with so much fervor that she half-wondered if he was as embarrassed as she was. "Who wouldn't think that?" he managed. "Anyone with eyes should see it."

She gaped at him, struggling to think of something to say, ultimately losing the battle against her pleasure and surprise. Twenty-nine years old, and this was the first time any man had called her beautiful. Oh, that it had to be this man, who could have told her she didn't stink like garbage and it would have been the most perfect string of words ever to be spoken by a person.

"I'm sorry if that's inappropriate -" he began.

"No, no. Just trying to reconcile this new world where I'm apparently beautiful. Strange," she said, affecting humor. "I don't feel any different."

"You're mocking me."

"No, no; I wouldn't dream of mocking you!" she said, delighted now. "You wound me with such accusations."

Finally, he smiled, and she found she would say any manner of stupid, careless things if only for a small glimpse of that smile. "All right, all right," he said. "You still can't take a compliment."

"And how would you fare?" she fired back. She was too caught up in the game to hear the quiet voice of her caution, warning her to keep her distance, to keep up the wall, the chase, the layers. She captured his hand in hers and it was just as wonderful as she imagined - the warm, solid weight of it comforting and thrilling all at once. "You have the most beautiful eyes," she said, laying it on thick. "I've never seen eyes like yours, and now having seen them, I doubt I'll ever notice any eyes other than yours for the rest of my life. You have cursed me with them as you have cursed me with your heavenly omelet, and yet I can't begrudge you for this curse, because they're just so beautiful. Just like you are yourself."

She'd meant it as a game, but now that the words hung between them, curling into the air like smoke, they'd taken a much more truthful, serious air than she'd intended. She was still holding his hand, and the feel of it coiled in her gut, too like the desire she tried to ignore. But he was so close, and only now did she realize that during the course of the conversation they had leaned unconsciously toward one another, so only a few shivering inches separated them. It would be so easy, and so wonderful, just to lean forward a little more, to press her lips against his, to know the feel of him, the taste -

It was as if everything in the world stuttered to a stop. Her thoughts whirled frantically - did he stare at her with those wide, fathomless eyes because he felt the same roaring desire or because he couldn't figure out how to rebuff a highly inappropriate advance from a commanding officer? She was about to cut her losses and drop his hand when he bridged the gap between them, his hand touching her face, drawing her closer, and she ached for it, thrilled for the touch of him, so close now - to hell with the consequences -

Someone cleared their throat behind him, and like that the odd spell that had come between them was broken. They recoiled from each other as if burned, thrilling with that aching, unmet want. Shepard spun wildly only to see Wrex looking at them with an expression of amusement, his arms crossed over his chest. "Morning," he said neutrally. "Was hoping for a bit of breakfast, but if you'd rather I left -"

"No!" Shepard said, shooting upright and tossing her plate into the sink. "By all means. Enjoy. Etcetera."

She didn't pause to look at Kaidan, though if she had she would have seen that his face had achieved an entirely new shade of red. She didn't look at Wrex, who seemed more bemused than anything. She fled, the better to bear her humiliation and shame.

It occurred to her as she thudded up the stairs to her cabin that she and Kaidan ran away from each other with increasing frequency, drawing closer and pulling away in odd lurches, and the feeling it gave her was so much like vertigo; the dizziness, the expectation of the fall. Though she knew that the fall was inevitable, and there was no going back now.

If only there was.


	12. Chapter 12

Feros was an old Prothean world, and as the Normandy flew low through the atmosphere, Kaidan could see that the surface was dotted with ancient spires many thousands of years old. He found it strange and fascinating that the spires stood even to this day, though the hands that had built them had died long ago. It opened to the door to a long corridor of such thoughts; what would remain when humans were gone from the galaxy?

He'd entertained a lot of similar philosophical quandaries in the last days. He liked to read the old philosophers and ponder what they pondered. The added benefit was that such thoughts would occupy him completely - most of the time anyway. He'd probe the edges of a postulate instead of wondering where Shepard was. He'd consider Zeno's paradoxes, or that Descartes (or was it Husserl?) who said that it was impossible to think of nothing, and that the mind could only conceive of nothingness as something.

But then a small thing would break through - he would think of something she'd find funny, and his thoughts would fill with the memory of her smile, or he'd remember what it had been like to feel her so close, her lips only inches away, slowly coming closer -

And he'd curse Descartes. If only it was possible not to think of anything.

They touched down on Feros in the matter of a few hours. Shepard stepped off the Normandy with a surprisingly buoyant step, and he and Ashley struggled to keep pace behind her. It didn't surprise him much that she was mostly ignoring him. Probably for the best, honestly. Otherwise, he'd smile at her smile, and draw closer as she did; two halves of a wanting whole, reflections of the other.

In the distance, he could hear shells rocking the ground, the subtle rip-thud of explosions slicing through the air. Shouting too - these sounds fainter, just on the edge of hearing. In front of him, Shepard drew her rifle, her index finger curling dangerously around the trigger. "Stay sharp," she said, her voice hard. There was no trace of the softer woman he'd seen in the mess hall, her mouth full of omelet, curling in a sweet smile.

"Aye, ma'am," Ashley echoed, following suit.

A man was waiting for them, standing about twenty feet down the dock. He chanced frequent glances over his shoulder, and as they drew closer Kaidan could see that his dark eyes were wide with fear. He held a scuffed pistol in dirty hands.

"Commander Shepard?" he called. "The Spectre?"

"That's me," Shepard said. "What's the problem here?"

"Geth," the man said. "Couple'a dreadnoughts came in few days ago, and then another handful joined them after. They've been hitting the settlement pretty hard."

"Do you have a leader?"

"Fai Dan's been organizing things," the man said. "He'll fill you in."

Shepard's mouth was set into a perpetually grim line; she hardly moved it to speak. "All right," she said. "Get to cover; we'll handle it from here."

The man never had the chance to obey. Kaidan heard the shrill whistle of the missile cutting through the air and Ashley's voice rising above, screaming at them to get down, but it was too late for the man; the projectile connected and lit him up like a firework.

He didn't think, not in the way most people do. It was instinct that lit the biotics in his blood and sent a geth slamming into the wall. It was instinct that hurled a warp dead center of the singularity Shepard had conjured, the resulting detonation rattling in his teeth. He slammed into cover next to Ashley, and the two of them popped in and out of cover at intervals - regular as clockwork.

He saw Shepard through a haze. A geth advanced on her, a red dot bouncing on her forehead, a breath away from splattering her head off her shoulders. He'd reached out with a silent scream caught in his throat, but he needn't have worried; she fired a hot pulse from her Omni-tool, knocking the geth down in a single shot.

He dimly realized only after the geth had been neutralized that bits of the man were now splattered on the dock. He wiped away a chunk of mush off his cheek with the detachment he'd learned through over a decade in the military. He'd think about the man later, when he was in his bunk - if he'd had a family or a girlfriend, or children, and he'd swallow the bile that burned at the back of his throat. But now, he only saw matter and blood, felt only a sick pit in his gut.

"God," Ashley muttered. "God-"

"Come on," Shepard said, her tone dark. But as they moved further into the ruined Prothean tower, Kaidan thought he saw a tremor run through her hands, almost so bad that she lost her grip on her gun. Her throat worked, and she clenched her hands into controlled fists, keeping her rifle drawn and engaged. If he hadn't been watching her closely, he might not have known she was affected at all.

It took them three hours to make their way through the halls and tunnels of the Prothean tower toward the settlement. No one said a word for the entire trek. They were scanning their surroundings - wary for the geth, who had seemed to decide that a brute force was illogical, and stealth was preferable out an outright attack. He heard skittering over their heads and leveled his pistol in the direction of the disturbance, heart threading an insistent pulse against the wall of his chest.

"Hold," Shepard said in a low voice, aiming the mouth of her gun at the ledge above them. He saw it before they did - a geth stalker, creeping over their heads, fixing them with its glowing ocular apparatus. He took quick aim and fired, and there was an answering thud as the geth lost its grip on the wall and tumbled down the stairwell, it's body crashing to the ground several flights below them.

"Good shot, Lieutenant," Shepard said, all business. 

"Thank you, Commander."

Ashley shot him an odd look, as if to ask him what he missed, but he only shook his head. He could no more begin to explain what had happened than he could attempt to understand it himself. They had been talking, things had been fine. Friendly, warm. And the conversation had changed almost without his being aware of it, until they were leaning closer to one another, her lips only mere inches away, centimeters . . .

 

The settlement was depressingly spartan. Kaidan was informed that it went by the name Zhu's Hope, which seemed partly ironic to him; the colonists skittered from one corner of the settlement to the other with harrowed, bleak expressions, clenching faulty weapons in their hands. There was another odd quality to them, though it was something he couldn't exactly put his finger on. A quality of far-sight in their eyes, as if they weren't really looking at the world around them, instead focusing on something in the distance.

"What a dump," Ashley muttered. "Geth've hit this place pretty hard."

"Or it was like this before they came," Shepard said, frowning. "I don't see any signs of battle here."

"Well, I thought I'd give them the benefit of the doubt," Ashley said. "You know."

Shepard's lips twitched briefly, though it did not approach a smile. "Come on."

Fai Dan was a short, middle-aged man, though at first glance he appeared to be much older. The wrinkles on his face seemed more like well-worn trenches made of stone rather than skin, and his eyes were dulled by exhaustion. But he was lean, and quite powerful. He regarded them steadily. "Commander Shepard? Fai Dan; it is good to meet you."

Shepard inclined her head, though she did not offer her hand to shake. "Likewise."

He nodded. "I'm glad the Council has finally sent someone to help us."

The stern woman at Fai Dan's side glowered at them, her eyes bright and furious. "Bit late, aren't you?"

"Arcelia!" Fai Dan hissed.

"You can worship the ground the Spectre walks on, Fai Dan, but I'm not going to thank them for taking their sweet time," Arcelia snapped, shouldering her rifle and brushing her tousled hair out of her eyes.

Fai Dan turned away from her, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, Commander. We've all been on edge since the geth came."

"It's fine," Shepard said, and she turned to Arcelia. "I am sorry we didn't come sooner. I - my crew and I will set this right."

Arcelia ignored this, though before she stalked away Kaidan saw something flash through her eyes - frustration and temper, maybe. She wasn't interested in solicitude, not from a representative of the Council. It was then that Kaidan considered Shepard as another might see her - a stooge for the Council, more concerned with their agendas than those of her fellow human's. It wasn't true, of course, but he could understand it.

Kaidan heard the feedback chirping of geth the exact moment they broke through the northern barrier, and he was dimly aware of Arcelia screaming, throwing herself into cover with her rifle clutched to her chest. Fai Dan's voice rose above the din, louder than Kaidan had thought possible in such a small man: "Protect the heart of the colony!"

Shepard flew into action. Her Omni-tool flared to life, frying a geth that had been about to splatter a young man against the walls with a single-well placed shot. He followed suit, hurling another geth high into the air before picking it off with a blast from his pistol. He was aware of Ashley behind him, picking off every geth that she came across with pinpoint accuracy, far better than he could ever acquit himself with a rifle.

"Into the tower," Shepard commanded. "That's where they touched down."

"Commander, we have -" Fai Dan began.

But Shepard cut him off, gesturing furiously with the mouth of her gun. "No!" she shouted. "My crew and I will handle this. Take care of your own."

And with that, she plunged into the besieged tower, single-minded with fury and purpose.

He'd had a few chances to get used to the way she worked while on a mission. It was almost like she became a different person, one the real Shepard thought a Commander should be like. Gone was the lightness to her, the good and awkward humor, the indecision. She was an actor in these places, with the gun in her hands. She'd gotten pretty comfortable with the act over the years.

There was no opportunity to be distracted here; they were neck deep in a tower infested with geth. Visibility was low, and there were lots of little hiding places for the AI to stake out and take their shots. No sense in making this easy for the bastards.

So he shadowed Shepard obsessively, a biotic throw perpetually glowing over his hands, ready to hurl outward at a single moment's notice. He learned to anticipate when Shepard would fire and when she would take cover, so that he could space his own offense around it. They began to work in tandem without even the benefit of spoken commands, and though she still had been unable to look at him since yesterday, he was a little pleased that they hadn't let it get in the way of work. This was important - life and death, desperate and bare. This was the  _most_  important.

At least, he wanted it to be.

A missile sailed over their heads, smashing into the blast-pocked wall behind them, and Kaidan felt the head of the explosion singe his skin; only just a hair two close. Shepard hurled a warp into a group of geth, and Kaidan grinned when his throw detonated with so much force that it splattered little chunks of geth around the room.

He heard the drop first, felt it next; like the geth dreadnought had dropped a Colossus on their heads. He glanced over his cover and his heart sank. Close enough to the truth, close enough to bite his tongue.

"Colossus," Ashley hissed. "God damn it."

Shepard wasn't even fazed. "We've brought one of these down before, remember?"

"Only takes once to get blasted to component atoms," Ashley muttered. But she activated the overkill protocol on her rifle and slammed the Colossus with a hail of blasts, each one perfectly aimed at its ocular apparatus. The Colossus took a step forward, the impact of its advance shaking the ground beneath them, but Shepard was not unbalanced; the warp she'd conjured smashed against its shields, halting its progress as small bands of electricity flared over it.

Kaidan saw too late what came for them. The barrage of missiles hurtled through the air, the sound shrill against his ears. He saw Ashley and Shepard dive behind another barrel, an overloading pulse already flaring from Shepard's Omni-tool. But he was too slow - distracted in that one moment by the thought that she wouldn't move fast enough, far enough.

The blast sent him flying a good fifteen feet away, where he crashed into the wall with so much force that it knocked the breath out of him. For those first few moments after the impact, time seemed to stretch and slow, before snapping back to the present with almost visceral violence. Everything was louder, more painful. A migraine raged in his temple, and he heard Shepard screaming from across the room as if she pressed her lips to his ear and howled.

He wasn't even thinking about acquitting himself in the face of such a stupid failure. He crawled to cover, and in a burst of furious instinct, he conjured a singularity so powerful that it ripped the Colossus off the ground and dangled it in the air, helpless as an animal in a trap. Ashley was the one to finish it, however; she launched a blast from her rifle that shattered its core, and the Colossus exploded, raining bits and pieces on the ground.

"Kaidan!" Shepard cried, and she was at his side almost instantly. He winced - her stringent voice sent another wave of pain lancing through his skull, but he was so relieved to see her and not be dead that he smiled, and their previous awkwardness was all but forgotten.

"Ah - sorry about that, Commander," he said, rubbing his throbbing head.

"Why would you apologize?" she demanded, incredulous. "I - I thought you'd been killed."

"I'm tougher than I look, apparently."

She let out a weak laugh. "Seems that way."

He flexed his limbs, and though his back hurt like hell, it seemed that he was not seriously injured. He got to his feet unsteadily and followed Shepard and Ashley back into the tower, winding through the halls toward the settlement, and though he knew it shouldn't have mattered that Shepard forgot he made her uncomfortable, and that he'd almost lost control and claimed her lips for his, he realized that it did. It did matter, and it encouraged him.

* * *

For the rest of the day, they conducted a series of interviews of the colonists of Zhu's Hope, to mixed results. Some of the colonists were eager to ply Shepard with their troubles, but most preferred to be left alone. It wasn't altogether uncommon for a tight-knit colony community to be suspicious and wary of strangers (especially military strangers) but something about their affect gave Kaidan a strange feeling.

He was suspicious, all things said. The colonists were easily distracted, and most kept their rooms dark, wincing when light from the hallway came through cracks. Kaidan had lived through enough migraines in his life to recognize the symptoms in another, and it struck him as odd that the entire colony suffered from what seemed to be the same ailment.

"I don't like it," Ashley muttered, poking at a cold chunk of field rations over her plate before flicking it onto the ground. "Bunch of weirdos around here."

"Not weirdos," Shepard corrected, and she swallowed her food. "But . . . it's weird. Weird circumstances."

"You're a pedant."

Shepard shrugged. "It's not a bad thing to be."

Kaidan said nothing. It had been a long day, and he was exhausted. He'd been a breath away from being killed in much the same way the man from the docks had been - a splattered stain on the ground, blood soaking into the dirt. He thought about that man, then. He'd learned the man's name was David, and he'd had a wife. Her weeping had ceased a few hours ago, but Kaidan felt as if he could still hear it, muffled by distance and shame.

If only they'd been faster, he thought bitterly. If only he'd been better.

He watched Shepard from the corner of his eyes. She'd been affected as well, but her grief existed in a deeper place than his, and when they were on the field he saw no sign of it existing at all. He was envious of that.

Would that he could have stopped those thoughts there, but as every time he glanced at her surreptitiously, he found himself following the graceful movement of her wrists, the outline of her as she hunched over her plate, taut stomach, vivid curves. With some effort, he forced himself to look away, though the fresh memory of it taunted him.

He couldn't remember the last time being attracted to a woman had made him so miserable. The business with Rahna . . . well, that was different. Different woman, different circumstances. He'd been younger then.

He thought that it would have been easier for them if they were both civilians - if he and Shepard had given up their oaths, or never taken them in the first place. Because in the civilian world, what was complicated about two people liking each other? There were no regs to consider in that place, no strictures, no walls. There would have only been a man and woman who enjoyed each other's company, who savored each other's happiness and desired -

"Pretty quiet over there, LT. What are you thinking about?" Ashley asked him.

"I was thinking about the Categorical Imperative."

She smirked. "No you weren't."

And though he would have liked to argue, he decided against it. "I was trying to," he said quietly. "I was thinking about that man at the dock."

Her smirk faded. "Rough deal about him."

It was more than rough; it was tragic. The man hadn't been military - he hadn't had any business holding a gun and acting as a guard. The people here were desperate, and there weren't enough of them with martial skill holding up the defense.

His skull rang with the echoes of a headache, made all the worse by the inadvertent loveliness of Shepard, and the way she'd stuck herself deep in the spaces between his ribs, so deep in him that it would only be an act of violence to purge her. That was assuming he even wanted to. "I'm going to turn in for the night," he said to them both, studiously avoiding Shepard's gaze.

Ashley waved, unaffected. "Have a good one."

He doubted he would. He knew what dreams waited for him, lurking at the edges of consciousness, eager to bring him down. They were the kind that made him thrash and recoil and grasp and want -  _the eager shape of her mouth on his, the shape of her laughter in the space between, changing to gasps, the hands that curled around the back of his neck, pulling, wanting hands on the softness of her skin, the softness of -_

As he ducked in the small bunker the colonists had set up for them, he let out a shaky breath, collapsing into the hard bunk and covering his eyes with his arm. There had to be some kind of service on the Citadel that would wipe his mind clean of these tormenting thoughts, these maliciously wonderful dreams.

In the meantime, he would suffer them. He would relish them.


	13. Chapter 13

Shepard woke sometime in the middle of the night. Zhu's Hope was mostly silent, but she thought there was an odd quality to the silence; as if it was not quite peaceful, but withholding or tense. Understandable, as she could hear the sounds of shells whistling through the air and striking their targets in the distance, the rumbling as ominous as thunder.

So sleep was a lost cause, then. The rigid bars of the cot dug into her back no matter which way she tossed and turned, and across the tiny room Ashley was snoring slightly. It wasn't irritating, but it did make it difficult to clear her mind long enough to fall back asleep.

With a groan, she rolled out of her cot and stretched, trying to work out the stiffness in her back before stepping out into the darkness. The cool night air kissed her skin, and she breathed it deeply as though she had never before.

She could count herself lucky that she hadn't been tormented by nightmares on this particular night. Instead, it seemed she was haunted by a different set of dreams, though these were no less terrifying.

It was to the point where she was starting to consider leaving Kaidan behind on assignment. He was a very skilled, disciplined soldier - practically invaluable in her opinion - but her reaction to him complicated things. She had started to focus on him on the battlefield, the numerous ways in which he could be hurt or killed, and it was blunting her efficiency as a Commander. She had to force herself to keep eyes forward, otherwise she'd scan him far more frequently than needed.

All it had taken was a stray missile that sent him flying across the room, crashing into the opposite wall. Her mind had filled with visions of his broken neck, his body burned beyond recognition, a thousand other horrors, and the cry had been wrenched from her lips completely without her permission. Their game of avoidance had seemed so stupid that moment, when either of them could be killed so easily.

She was the Commander, dammit. She was a Spectre now. There were things she needed to consider so that she would always be at her best. And the fact remained that Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko had become an inappropriate distraction, through no fault of his own.

It wasn't fair to him. He'd done nothing wrong; indeed, he'd done everything right. He was principled, strong, skilled, a thousand times more sure than she could ever be. It wouldn't be right for her to punish him merely because she'd developed highly unprofessional feelings for him.

It would be better if she could just remove those feelings and continue on as comrades. But then, those thoughts would insidiously curl around her mind, obscuring like smoke. She would see his beautiful smile, his eyes that seemed to be equal parts hesitant and bright. She would remember his steadiness, his easy manner, and suddenly the thought of cutting that away would fill her with so much pain that she held her hand to her chest.

What a mess.

"Commander?" It was Ashley, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

Shepard let out a slow breath. Part of her had feared that it would be Kaidan, but a shameful part of her had hoped as well. "What is it, Chief?"

"What're you doing up so early?"

"Your snoring woke me up."

"Bullshit! I don't snore."

Shepard grinned. "Maybe I was imagining it."

"Probably were. When's the last time you got a full night?"

A sigh. "Before this whole mess started."

Ashley rocked forward on her heels before patting Shepard awkwardly on the shoulder, and Shepard realized this kind of interaction made her slightly uncomfortable. "We'll get it done, ma'am," she said, and despite everything the encouragement sounded sincere. "Saren may have the drop on us, but we're gaining on him. We're going to stop whatever it is that he's doing."

"Yeah," Shepard said, but she wasn't so easily convinced. There were many pieces to the situation that they knew, but too much was still missing. Saren had come to Feros for something at Exo-Geni Co. but right now they were flying blind as to why. Shepard did not like flying blind. That was how mistakes were made.

"You don't believe me," Ashley said, not a question. "It's all right. I know we'll get this done."

Shepard studied Ashley closely, the straight lines of her face, the angle of her nose. She remembered every time Ashley had carried out an order with supreme efficiency, regardless of any personal misgivings. "You're a good soldier," Shepard said finally.

Ashley shifted again. "Ah – thanks, ma'am."

"I don't think the Alliance has been as good to you as you deserve."

"Well . . . yeah. Maybe not. But I do the best I can with what I have." Ashley sniffed. "All anyone can do, really."

As they watched the sun slowly break above the horizon, Shepard found that she agreed. She was suddenly so thankful for the Chief that she could not put that relief into words. She could only stand there and hope that her presence and the weighted silence was affirmation enough.

* * *

" _Come in Lieutenant,"_ Shepard said, her voice cracking over some interference.

Kaidan cleared his throat. "I read you, ma'am."

" _We've reached the Exo-Geni building,"_ she said. " _Ran into some geth, but nothing we couldn't handle. Report on your end?"_

Kaidan glanced quickly around the enclosure. The colony could hardly be described as bustling, for while everyone had set about their work, it was with a strange affectation – weariness or exhaustion, or something more sinister. "Nothing out of the ordinary yet," he said.

She heard the reluctance in his voice anyway.  _"But?"_

"But I have a weird feeling. Something isn't right here."

" _That's why I left you and Williams behind. Keep an eye on it, and ping me if anything happens."_

"Aye, Commander."

He took vague comfort that she kept things brusque and businesslike while on duty. Their interaction during the slow, in between times might go beyond what was appropriate for a commander and her subordinate, but here she kept things clean. It was a relief.

"What exactly does she think is going to happen here? Ashley groused.

"The geth could come back," Kaidan pointed out. "She probably wants to keep the colony intact as best we can."

"The colony isn't our primary objective," Ashley argued. "Finding out what Saren wanted is."

"The two could be related."

"'Could' being the operative word."

Kaidan sighed. "Griping about it isn't going to help the situation."

"Maybe not, but it sure makes me feel a little better."

"Right."

"I bet you're the reason she stuck us on guard duty, anyway," Ashley added under her breath.

"How is that, now?"

"She's all conflicted," Ashley said, and her expression slowly gave way to a grin, her teeth bared like some feral creature. "Distracted by your dashing good looks."

"Right."

"It's true. It's all over her face. She just can't help herself now, so she's trying to keep things all business-like."

"You're full of shit."

"How dare you accuse me of such a thing." Ashley clutched her heart in mock-hurt. "You could always ask her, see what she says."

"What am I supposed to be asking her?"

"If she feels the same. If you're going to have to have a talk about the regs."

"If – and that's a big if – she feels anything, she's made her position pretty clear," Kaidan said stoutly. "Duty first."

"We'll see," Ashley said, her predatory grin widening. "We'll just see how that works out for you."

"Your smug certainty doesn't make you any more right, you know."

"Sure, sure. Maybe not. I'll bet you anything I am right. Bet you anything you two cave and your little denials come to nothing."

He was getting pretty tired of Ashley throwing his feelings back in his face, complete with taunts about Shepard returning those feelings. It was impossible, for a thousand reasons Kaidan had already outlined in his head: it was reckless and dangerous, it went against the regs, and while they could probably be intimate sometime during leave, it would not be a sustainable arrangement, and likely would cause even more pain. "I'll take that bet."

"Sure about that? I'd say the odds are pretty firmly in my favor."

"We'll see."

Ashley held out her hand. "All right. Two hundred credits you two won't last a month."

"Two hundred?!" Kaidan spluttered.

"Two hundred is the lowest I'm going, LT. We're not in middle school."

He scowled before holding out his hand. "Fine. Two hundred your little theories about me and – and the Commander come to nothing."

"Two hundred you two fly into each other's arms in a month."

"Ambitious."

"Not even a little. You don't get a nice cushy view of you two from the sidelines," Ashley said, smug. "Now let me just fantasize what I'll spend my hard-earned winnings on."

"You haven't even won yet," Kaidan groused.

"Ha! You said 'yet'."

Kaidan decided not to dignify any of this with a response. With a long suffering sigh, he resumed the patrol around Zhu's Hope, wincing a little as pain pulsed through his skull. Another migraine, probably. These days he was lucky to go forty-eight hours without one.

He and Ashley patrolled without any further conversation. And instead of focusing on their stupid bet (and the uncomfortable fact that Kaidan knew Ashley had made the smarter wager), he observed the colonists closely. Today most of them had claimed some kind of illness and stayed inside, and the few who had felt well enough to work were obviously pushing past pain; they would frequently stop working to rub their foreheads, wincing in the overcast light.

He came upon a little girl, playing with a toy spaceship in the dirt. He thought it strange that her parents were nowhere to be seen, and that every few moments she would wobble in place, dropping the toy to the ground and cradling her head with both small hands.

"Keep an eye out," he told Ashley under his breath.

"What are you doing?"

"Going to ask some questions."

"None of them tell us anything."

He indicated to the little girl, resuming her play with as much verve as she could muster. "She might."

"I'm not sure if I should be impressed or horrified."

He looked at her askance. "It's not like I'm going to beat it out of her, for crying out loud."

Ashley shooed him. "Go on, don't mind me."

He approached the little girl slowly, and when she heard him she fixed him with a gaze that managed to be skeptical and wide-eyed at the same time; the province of children alone. She sniffed, wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand before tucking some dirty blonde hair behind her ears.

"My name is Kaidan. Can I ask you a few questions?" he asked her.

She recoiled slightly. "Am I in trouble?"

"No, of course not."

"Oh, okay." The girl seemed convinced by this, for she set her toy gently down and sat up on her knees, eager to be good.

"What's your name?" he asked her.

"Bethany," she said. "My grammy was named Bethany too, but she died before I was born."

"That's a nice name."

The girl shifted, a bit embarrassed. "I used to not like it."

"Where are your parents, Bethany?"

"Daddy was killed by the machine people," Bethany said matter-of-factly. "Mama stays inside and cries a lot."

He heard Ashley make a strangled noise. He forged ahead, though he suddenly felt sick. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"He's not coming back," she said, her eyes going even wider. "He's gone. Mama keeps saying that he's coming home. She forgets what happened."

Kaidan wondered if this was the result of grief that went beyond words, or something more sinister. "Has there been anything strange going on lately?"

"You guys came," Bethany said, peering closer at him. "I've never seen a real live soldier before."

He smiled. "Yeah? And what's your opinion so far?"

The little girl's gaze drifted toward Ashley, decked out in heavy armor with what might look like every gun in existence strapped on her back to a little girl. "Is it hard to walk with all of that?" she asked.

"Not so hard after practice."

Bethany nodded seriously. "You look like you stop bad things from happening." She looked away, drawing slow patterns in the dirt. "I wish I could be strong like you and your friend."

"Maybe someday you can be."

"Not right now," Bethany said, becoming agitated. "I can't do anything. Mama cries and holds her head and says Daddy's coming back even though he isn't, and everyone walks around like they're pretending everything is okay even though it's not, and –"

"What is it?" Kaidan asked the girl, leaning closer.

Bethany looked away, as if ashamed. "Sometimes I hear a whispering. I ask if anyone else can hear it, and they say no, and that I must still be sad about Daddy. But they're lying!" she burst out.

"How do you know?"

"Because they do what the whispers tell me to do. I don't because Daddy said I should never do what a stranger tells me to do. Daddy wouldn't have listened to the whispers either, but everyone else does. They move things around, hide things, break things." She trailed off, toying with the wing of her spaceship. "Are you here to help us?"

Kaidan had been about to give her a vague answer when Ashley burst into the conversation. "Yes we are," she said fervently. "So just hang in there, okay?"

Bethany nodded solemnly. "Okay. I should go. Mama needs her medicine now." She gathered her toys in her arms and trudged back inside, but not before she shot them a final look over the top of her toys, blinking owlishly.

"What was that you said?" Kaidan said, turning on her. "'This colony isn't our primary objective'?"

"Oh, come on. Is that what you would have said to that little girl?"

"No. Just never pegged you as a soft touch."

Ashley shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable. "Nothing wrong with being a soft touch," she muttered. "I have little sisters, okay? I fully admit to being a sucker when kids are involved."

"Nice to know you have more than a 'smug hardass' setting."

"Man, you're really going to milk this, aren't you?"

"What can I say?" he said, flashing a grin. "Revenge is sweet."

"Yeah, yeah." She shouldered her assault rifle, scanning the enclosure with worried eyes. "Guess you guys were right, though. Something's pretty wrong here."

He frowned. "I'd assumed most of the damage was from the geth attacks, not internal sabotage. All because some voices told them too?"

"Maybe they're crazy."

"What's the likelihood that they're all suffering from the same mental illness? Same symptoms, same voice telling them to do the same things."

"Maybe the girl was making that part up?"

"Do you think she was?" he asked her pointedly.

Ashley was quiet for a moment. "No."

He was about to reply when the ground shuddered beneath their feet, and below them he heard something that sounded vaguely like the screech of an animal in pain – a high, whistling howl that seemed to rattle in his teeth, his very bones. The horrible sound grew louder until he knew that his eardrums would burst, the sound mingling with his migraine, and he feared he would go insane from the combined force of it.

"LT!" Ashley shouted over the din. "Look!"

The colonists were not bent over in pain, nor did they seem surprised at the shuddering screeching sound. Instead of cowering, the colonists whipped around and drew their weapons in unison, leveling them in Kaidan and Ashley's direction. He shoved her to the ground just as they opened fire.

"What the shit?!" Ashley howled as he dove after her. "What the shit!"

"Commander? We have a problem," he shouted into the comm, a hail of bolts whizzing over their heads.

" _I read you, Lieutenant. We're on our way back. What's the problem?"_

"There was a – a weird sound below us and the colonists turned hostile. They're –" Kaidan trailed off, chancing a glance over cover to check their movements. "They seem to be trying to protect the heart of the colony."

" _The center . . . right under the colony, you said?"_

"Aye, ma'am."

He heard Shepard curse, Wrex's gruff voice in the background.  _"They're protecting a Thorian."_

He ducked as another hail of shots whizzed by. "A what?"

" _It's some kind of creature that likes to enslave organic minds,"_ she said in a rush, and he heard an explosion behind her voice. " _Garrus, watch those geth!"_

" _Right, Commander."_

" _Anyway, you noticed yesterday how weird they were acting, right?"_

"One of them admitted to hearing voices," Kaidan said.

" _Yeah, definitely a Thorian. Exo-Geni were studying its effects on organics – they put the colony right over it to see what would happen. That's what Saren was here for."_

"What the hell is he interested in the Thorian for?" Ashley shouted.

" _I don't know yet,"_ Shepard said, another explosion dissolving into interference that blurred the sound of her voice.  _"I know we need to kill this thing."_

"Agreed." He swallowed. "Orders, Commander?"

" _Maintain your position and wait for me; I'll be there in twenty minutes. Do NOT fire on the colonists. Subdue them by any other means necessary, but don't kill them."_

"How the hell are we supposed to manage that?! They're shooting the hell out of our position!" Ashley howled into the comm.

" _You're trained Alliance personnel, and they're civilians with broken guns. I'm sure you'll think of something."_

Kaidan cleared his throat, watching as another hail of bullets sailed over their heads and smashed into the wall behind them. "Uh – aye, Commander. See you in twenty."

There was a pause, and he thought for a minute that she had clicked off without a sign off. But then the comm blipped on once again, and her voice was no longer brusque with orders and commands, but filled with such tender concern that he thought for a moment that he'd misheard – she couldn't possibly have gone from one end to the other while speaking to him. _"Be safe,"_ she said quietly, and in the next breath, she was gone.

And despite their ridiculous, dangerous situation, Ashley grinned, in a decidedly smug way. "Say goodbye to your credits, LT."


	14. Chapter 14

Shepard pushed Garrus aside and took his place at the Mako's wheel. "Get on that gun, Vakarian! Wrex can't work it for shit."

"Aye, Commander," Garrus said, and she heard the note of eager pride in his voice.

Behind him, Wrex grumbled loudly. "Twitchy, useless thing. Get me out there and I'll rip those geth apart."

"No time," Shepard said, her voice clipped and short. "We've got a situation at the colony and limited means of neutralizing it."

Wrex nodded to her pack. "You planning on using those grenades?"

Shepard said nothing. She was not inclined toward trusting any Exo-Geni employees at the current moment, considering that in the last few hours she'd been shot at, lied to, and misled at their hands. But if they were telling the truth this time . . . well, it would mean the difference between a colony saved and a colony destroyed. The Thorian did not seem to care one way or the other what happened to the people it had made thralls of – only that they protected its hole.

"We'll use them," she said finally. "Any funny shit, though, and we're going to have to reevaluate."

"Whatever you say, Commander," Wrex said.

"Head's up!" Garrus called, swinging the top gun around and blasting a half dozen geth off the road. She pulled hard on the wheel, only just avoiding the volley of missiles, slamming on the brakes just as they teetered precariously on the edge. Below them, the bodies of the geth fell into the cloud cover, and who knew how many thousands of feet beyond.

"Close one," Wrex muttered. "Sure you don't want me to take the wheel?"

"Can it, Wrex," Shepard bit out. "Trying to concentrate, here."

"Fantastic job so far."

She felt that the closer they came to the colony, the more difficult it was for her to put her racing thoughts aside and be calm. There was the Thorian - enslaving innocent colonists for its own purposes. There was Saren, and the disconcerting realization that in the course of his plan, he needed to overwrite the minds of others and subvert them to his will. There was the fact that she had left Kaidan behind, when every instinct in her body screamed at her to keep him close – too close, if she was being honest.

Because it wasn't that she wanted him at her flank, watching behind her, his eyes on her blind spots. She wanted him closer, skin to skin, palms pressed together, sliding, touching tasting –

She wanted the freedom to speak to him as she wanted. The freedom to tell him all the things the burgeoned on her tongue when she met his even, fathomless gaze; the things that she prayed he would return.

It was so inappropriate as to be completely behind reproach, and yet over the course of this assignment, she had stepped past a point of no return; she could no more stop what was happening than she could control the movements of the stars themselves.

Of course, all this was moot if he got himself killed by brainwashed colonists. She slammed her foot on the gas pedal, and the Mako lurched forward with so much force that the three of them were thrown against the back of their seats.

* * *

"So how exactly are we supposed to do this?" Ashley howled as another volley of gunfire whizzed over their heads.

Kaidan considered. Shooting anyone was out; even though he was certain in his marksmanship and his ability to wound rather than kill, he disregarded such a thing. Even wounding these innocent people was monstrous; they had lives to live in this brutal colony, and they needed to be at the top of their form.

"Get in close and knock them out?" he said finally.

"Yeah? And how exactly are we supposed to do  _that?_ In case you hadn't noticed, they are shooting at our heads. Any soft spots, really. Any other bright ideas?"

A missile exploded a few feet behind them, and out of the corner of his eye, Kaidan saw two colonists attempting to flank them, their guns at the level of their eyes, which narrowed. Fingers twitching over the trigger. He took a breath, screwed up every ounce of ability he could muster and –

The colonists froze in place, a shimmering barrier of mass effect energy covering every inch of them, like a sparkling cloak. He let out a breath, willing his heart to slow.

Ashley gaped at him. "Mind doing that to the rest of them?"

"Not without breaking the first stasis."

"You're sure?"

"Never done this before, exactly."

"Pretty good for a first time."

He shrugged. "We're in kind of a bind, after all."

"There's an understatement."

He sank into a crouch, and the two of them kept low to the ground as they edged around the colony to the group he'd put in stasis. The free colonists fired at them wildly, but there was enough cover to keep from making themselves easy targets. With a tight breath, he released the stasis, and before the colonists could turn around and shoot, he and Ashley brought the butt of their rifles down on their skulls, dropping them to the ground, unconscious.

"That'll work," Ashley said.

"They'll have pretty bad headaches when they wake up."

"Better than being dead, in my humble opinion."

"True enough."

It was slow work, and tremendously dangerous besides; like fighting an animal twice your size with your hands behind your back. But the two of them were methodical in their sweep of the colony. Ashley provided covering fire, and while the colonists hid behind crates and the sides of buildings, the two of them crept forward. Should the colonists lean out of their cover, Kaidan would slam them with a stasis field, and he found the more he did it, the more confident he became in his ability to do so.

He wondered about Shepard as they fought. Twenty minutes ago she was on her way with Wrex and Garrus in tow, but as any soldier knows, there are any number of terrible things that can happen in only a fraction of that time. One minute you were fine, the next minute your guts were hanging out of your stomach. One minute you were thinking about home, the next you were dead with a bullet through your brain. It was a grim reality that any serviceman got really familiar with, and it lent a sense of sustained low-level panic at the impermanence of it all.

As he brought the butt of his rifle down on another colonist's skull, he knew that if something were to happen to Shepard before they resolved whatever it was that was between them, it wouldn't be like losing just another friend. Already, he'd come to expect her bright smile when she came down to the crew deck for a meal. Already, he'd come to treasure the way she saw the world, and how it fascinated him. And as he would have with any other deeply unpleasant prospect, he pushed the thought of losing her far away.

"LT!" Ashley's voice broke through his thoughts. "Look!"

He heard it before he saw it – the roar of the Mako's engine, growing louder as it advanced, and the knot that had formed in his heart relaxed somewhat. The Mako burst into the colony like an avenging angel, and before it had fully come to a stop Shepard launched out of the side, leaping through the air before rolling, her rifle already in her hands. He saw her eyes dart about, and they widened slightly when he caught her gaze.

Like a flash, she resumed her one-woman battering ram. Three colonists attempted to flank her, but she hurled a grenade at them, where it burst into a puff of smoke. One by one, the colonists dropped like flies, and in that instant he knew – knock out gas. Why didn't they make such a thing a staple in their armory?

He heard a noise behind him and spun so quickly than he felt his neck crack, and he leveled his rifle at the source of the disturbance. It was Fai Dan, though Kaidan did not see the haze of blind obedience in the man's eyes. He saw a struggle.

"Take it easy," he said slowly, holding his hands up.

"It wants me to kill you," Fai Dan whispered, and he slowly aimed his pistol right at Kaidan's heart, though it shook badly in his hands.

"Alenko!" Shepard screamed from across the compound, and he thought the pure terror in her voice would pierce his heart. He quickly brought his rifle to bear, aiming it at the struggling man.

"Put the gun down, Fai Dan," he said, keeping his voice soft. "Put it down."

"No," Fai Dan hissed through clenched teeth. "It wants me to kill you . . . but I won't!  _I won't!"_

Abruptly, before Kaidan could even breathe, Fai Dan pressed the mouth of his pistol to his skull and pulled the trigger. Kaidan had only just begun to say 'No!' when the man fell in a crumpled heap, his limbs twitching before he was still. Blood spattered the duty gravel.

Shepard and Ashley caught up to him in that moment, and it took him half a second too long to realize that Shepard touched his arm, her eyes wide with real fear. "Thank god you're all right," she said, bending over to catch her breath. "I – I mean, both of you. Thank god you're both all right."

Now that the immediate danger had passed, Ashley had latitude to be smug. "Right," she said, rolling her eyes.

Shepard ignored this with great dignity. "Wrex, Vakarian? I need you two to secure the colony while Alenko, Williams and I take care of the Thorian. Think you can handle that?"

"Yes, Commander," Garrus said early. Wrex merely brought his hand up to his skullplate in an insouciant salute. Kaidan wasn't sure – he hadn't had nearly enough time growing accustomed to krogan facial expression – but he could have sworn Wrex flashed him with a mocking grin before he drew his shotgun and went to secure the perimeter.

So it wasn't likely he was going to forget what he saw, then. God damn it.

It wasn't likely Kaidan was going to forget either, come to that. Nor were his dreams particularly prepared to allow him to in the first place. It was easy to find a thousand reasons to be close to her – a report he needed input on, a question about the mission, a concern about the crew, etcetera – and most of the time she seemed perfectly willing to indulge his diversions even without an acceptable excuse.

It left him desperately wondering how to proceed. Throw caution to the wind and finish what they started? It was a thrilling, seductive thought only as long as he ignored the consequences. Well of course there were the regs – that hadn't changed. There was the fact that what seemed to be mutual attraction could easily throw their mission in jeopardy. There was the fact that all things considered he was not very familiar with this ritual. He could count the women he had feelings for on one hand (two fingers, actually), and they did not even come close to comparing to Shepard, not even a little.

He pushed these thoughts away with some irritation. He was on a goddamn mission, where it was best to keep his head clean and clear, yet in the last few excursions with his new Commander he'd been unable to keep focused once. If that wasn't a strike against the situation, Kaidan didn't know what was.

Shepard fiddled at the console near the center of the colony, and with a careful hand guided a crane down to lift one of the residential blocks away, revealing a hatch that led to a series of tunnels underground.

"Think that's where we need to go?" she asked Ashley.

"Looks good to me, ma'am."

"Stay frosty, then." Shepard paused, looking uneasy. "And, uh, keep your heads clean. This thing likes to play with people's minds."

"I should be fine," Ashley said easily. "I don't have anything in my mind that the Thorian could play with. And LT here . . . well, he probably has too much going on in there." She threw a sharp elbow into his side. "Right, LT?"

He resolved to hide the contents of her locker when this was all over. "Absolutely."

But that resolution faltered when Shepard shot him such a sweet smile that he momentarily forgot everything outside of the fact that it existed.

With a huff of breath, he ducked into the hatch and followed Shepard and Ashley into the subterranean complex. There was a chill on the air, which was thick with a ripe, earthy stench. At his side, Ashley gagged into her hand. "Smells like a dumpster."

"Or something like it," Shepard said. "We just need to find this thing and stomp it out, like a . . . like . . . "

She trailed off, and as he followed the line of her gaze he nearly gasped aloud. He'd been expecting something small – a root that could easily be crushed underfoot, at which point they'd be free to leave this planet. He had not been expecting to find a creature slung in the middle of the complex, hanging by dozens of tendrils that clung to the walls, keeping the creature securely in place.

"My god," Ashley breathed. "That's --?"

"The Thorian, I'd guess," Shepard said. "So much for stomping this thing into dust."

"We'd need a bigger boot for that, Commander," he replied without thinking.

"Ha. That'd be nice." She cast her gaze around the enclosure, lips pursed in thought. "We could probably try shoot off those tendril nodes?" she suggested. "Break enough of them, and it'll fall the rest of the way down."

"Sounds like as good a plan as any, ma'am," Ashley said. "The sooner we get the hell out of here, the better." She shivered. 

Shepard said nothing, and with a quirk of her chin, she set off into the complex, switching on her rifle-light and peering into the murky gloom.

They continued on in silence, winding down the multiple levels of the complex. Every now and then he heard skittering – the sound of nails dragging on concrete, perhaps – and a chill would rise on his neck. He heard Shepard and Ashley breathing in the darkness, the column of light coming from their rifles cutting into the gloom, but not wide enough for comfort or ease.

"Did you say something?" Ashley asked after a long moment of silence.

"No," Shepard said. "No one's said anything."

Ashley did not reply, and though he couldn't see her face, he could almost imagine the pinched unease on her face. The Thorian liked to play with minds, Shepard had said . . .

They discovered a tendril a few meters in, and Shepard proceeded to make quick work of it, blasting it with her shotgun a few times until it was nothing but a pile of shredded matter. The creature in the center of the complex shrieked its displeasure, and Kaidan heard the skittering sound again – footsteps.

He was dead certain it was footsteps.

"Something's here," he whispered.

"I hear it too," Shepard said.

But behind them, Ashley groaned, and when he spun around and trained the column of light on her face, he saw that her eyes were clenched shut, one hand pinching the bridge of her nose hard enough to leave a mark.

"Ashley?"

"N-no," she said through clenched teeth. "I'm fine."

But it became clear she wasn't fine the deeper they went. Kaidan wondered as they went – perhaps now that the Thorian had relinquished control on the colonists it had more capacity to attempt to subvert . . . them. With fewer targets, it would take less force to make them submit. And if they resisted . . . it would have the resources to increase its attempt.

And he heard it, then; a vague whispering. A voice that was not his.  _She's in your way,_  it crooned into his ear.

He kept his lips pressed tightly together and shook the voice away – ignored it through force of will. But it seeped – it slithered. It cradled his thoughts, subverted them, stroked his ears; base desires, long forgotten wants . . .

It grew darker the deeper they went. He thought he saw something skittering at the corner of his eye, but when he whipped around toward the source of the disturbance, he only saw detritus, surrounded by many odd looking nodes on the ground – porous and reeking.

"No!" Ashley burst out. "I won't!"

"What the hell is going on with you?" Shepard demanded.

"N- nothing."

"Are you hearing voices?!"

"NO!"

But Shepard fixed her with a hard stare. "Focus, Chief. Remember what we're doing here." Her features were closed before they vanished into darkness.

He kept his voice low, though just at the base of his skull a pulse of pain flared, and it sent a hot wave of nausea rolling through him. "Ashley?"

She did not answer him.

"Don't listen," he said quietly.

But she gave no indication that she'd even heard him.

 _She'll hurt Shepard,_ the whispers warned.  _She cannot fight the Voice._

His jaw snapped in sudden rage, and if it would have done a damn thing, he would have flown at the body of the Thorian and ripped it inside out with every ounce of biotic power he could muster. He kept a tight lid on it most days, so most of his potential lay under the surface – the tip of the iceberg that conceals a behemoth. And though he'd been warned to never max out for fear of brain hemorrhage, he would make an exception for anything that dared hurt these women – his comrades, his friends.

 _Shut up!_ he thought fiercely.  _Shut the hell up!_

 _You'll see,_ the whispers taunted.  _She cannot resist the Voice._ There was a sly note when it added:  _you will not be able to, either._

And at that moment, he found it odd that Shepard did not seem to struggle against the Voice. Was she immune? Did the Voice hold no interest for her? Or . . . perhaps she'd already succumbed to the Voice, without putting up a fight. She was playing at being unaffected, Kaidan mused. Each tendril that she blasted was too weak to do much damage. She was in league with the creature; it was the only explanation.

He shuddered as another wave of nausea rolled through him. That was the stupidest thing he'd thought today.

 _Are you so sure?_ the Voice asked him.  _Can you know your beautiful leader's thoughts?_

No. He wished he could, though.

_You would know them if you listened to me._

_You're lying,_ he accused.

_The Voice does not lie. The Voice touches the minds of organics with ease, and it sees all._

_. . . Prove it._

_You languish in silence and shadow, yet you burn without words for the form of your leader. You long to know her as the Voice would; without boundary, without restriction. You desire the freedom to express, yet you lack the courage to do so. You plan a thousand steps in advance and adhere strictly to your designs, and you burn with envy for those who have learned to be free._

Another wave of pain crawled over his skull, and he sucked in a gasp between his teeth.  _You're wrong._

_How is it you think that the Voice is able to subsume and control the wills of organics? It is because the Voice knows their minds more intimately than they themselves do._

He ignored the Voice, watching the light of his pistol dance on Shepard's back, catching the bright red of her hair like a flame. He wasn't weak, he insisted. He would not be subsumed and controlled, as the Voice insisted. He would ignore it.

Through a haze, he saw Shepard aim her shotgun at another tendril, her lips pressed together as she took aim. He saw Ashley lurch forward with her rifle drawn – not aimed at the tendril, but at –

"NO!" he shouted, and without thinking, without heeding any voice, he dove forward just as the shot rang out. He felt a pain rip through his shoulder, spattering the ground behind him with gore, and though the pain was sharp as a razor, he did not fall. Instead, he let out a guttural yell and, with every ounce of effort he possessed, caught Ashley in a stasis so absolute that it froze even the expression of abject horror on her face; the moment the Voice had relinquished control.

"Alenko!" Shepard cried just as he felt to the ground with his hand to the wound, breathing hard. 

He swallowed and bit his tongue so hard that he tasted blood, clinging to consciousness. "I'm fine," he said between his teeth. "She got me in the shoulder."

"She – " Shepard demanded, kneeling next to him, her hands tracing over the wound frantically, as if searching for a way to help, and though he was in pain and the wound was leaking an alarming amount of blood down his chest, a dim part of his mind rejoiced that she was touching him at all.

"The Thorian," Kaidan whispered. "It – " 

She let out a shaky breath, swallowing hard, before her stare flickered up to him. "Are you – are you hearing any voices?"

He knew he should tell the truth. This was officially a dire situation, and as his Commander, she had a right to every facet of their predicament, the better to formulate strategy. But there was a weak part of him – perhaps the one the Voice toyed with – that distrusted her motives, that feared the uncertain and unknown. "No," he whispered, horrified at himself.

She nodded, all business. "Let's get this fixed up."

She activated her Omni-tool and switched the setting to medi-gel, carefully binding it around the hole in his armor, the slowing blood. Though after a moment, she looked up and met his gaze, and her other hand came to rest on his shoulder. And god, he was completely possessed of the irrational, foolish impulse to kiss her – blood and haunting darkness and immobilized Ashley and all. He saw the same thought cross her features, for in the time they'd known each other, he'd grown so familiar with each subtle shift and what they meant. He would try to master that language all his life.

But instead, she pulled away, gently patting his arm and clearing her throat. "Good as new," she said in a halting voice. "Well, not really but . . . think you can watch my flank?"

"Anything, Commander."

So he followed her closely as she blasted tendrils off the walls, the cries of the Thorian growing more desperate with each severed node. He felt the Voice force its way into his mind with renewed fervor, and try as he might to concentrate on their perimeter or the way she moved as she walked, it was futile.

 _You love her,_ the Voice taunted.  _And she loves you._

 _You don't know anything,_ he fired back angrily.

_I know your mind. I know hers._

_You're lying._

_Shall I enumerate all you wish to know of this woman you've fallen in love with?_ He could almost hear the taunting smirk in the Voice.  _For such a logical man, it is fascinating that you would succumb to such a thing so quickly. Is it a failing of yours . . . or a design of hers? Perhaps both?_

_Go away._

_She grieves desperately for her mother, in a way that I find very interesting. She does not see herself when she looks in the mirror; she sees weakness, broken pieces of a whole. She never knew her father, and so all her life she has hoarded father figures to admire, like the model ships she loves to collect._

He hadn't known any of this, and as much as he hated the Voice, he longed to know more. It was so tempting, in a horrible, sick way; to instantly know answers to questions he had agonized over.

_But you needn't worry; you are no substitute father to her. You are everything she wishes she was, everything she wishes to possess, and she hopes that perhaps she can gain your strength through proximity to you. She would suck you dry – use your skills and abilities to become whole, and then toss you aside when you no longer provide what she needs._

_. . . you're lying._

_Am I? The Voice does not lie. Ask yourself why she has no friends, why her ex-lovers both hate and desire her even now? She hoards them and then discards them when they no longer serve. And she will consume you in the same way._

_You said she loves me._

_And indeed she does. This is how a spider loves its prey._

He struggled against these words, but the longer they hung in the silent balance, the more they took the shape and function of truth. Indeed – Shepard had no friends, none besides the ones she spoke to now. She didn't make calls or send mail. She wandered around the ship whenever she wasn't working, seeking the company of those aboard instead of maintaining contact with anyone she'd known.

She sought him out especially. She would lean closer, charming, coy; gaze upturned through feathered lashes. And he would come when she called, like a loyal thrall; just like she wanted. And though there still was a small part of him struggled against these thoughts, he pushed those thoughts away. This had the look of truth, the feel. The Voice had been right about everything regarding his own mind . . . why would it lie about hers?

_She . . . how could she?_

_She is indeed a broken creature, and this is all she knows._

_And I would have . . . I would have let her. I would have –_

_You have no need to fear now, for the Voice has deemed you worthy, and therefore I will protect you. But first . . . you must protect me._

And he understood. The Thorian – defenseless while she killed it slowly. He saw a memory of a predatory grin on her face – a memory that belonged to nothing. He saw unattached aggression toward a creature that had only wished to exist. He would not allow it.

"Shepard," he said suddenly.

She turned to him, concern making her features tight.  _Feigned concern,_ the Voice dismissed.  _Pay no attention to it._

"What's wrong?" she asked quickly.

"I . . . don't think we should hurt the Thorian."

Surprise, now. "What?" she said again.

"I – I don't think we should destroy it just yet. I mean . . . not without talking to the Council first."

"Alenko, this thing is dangerous," she said, her eyes knowing and wide, gesturing fiercely toward the Thorian hanging by a thread – only a single thread, and all would be lost.  _He_ would be lost.

Another sick wave of pain clouded his thoughts, and he swayed in place. "I don't think it means any harm," he said through his teeth. "It's . . . monstrous to kill something because we don't understand it."

"What's it telling you?" she asked quietly. "You know why we're here. Remember that Saren was after this--"

"It doesn't matter what it's telling me," he said, anger bubbling in his voice. " _I_ don't think we should kill it."

"You were keen enough when we were outside, " she said speculatively, narrowing her eyes. "Remember? Suddenly, now that we're in here, you've changed your mind. Why do you think that is?"

 _She's trying to distract you!_ the Voice warned.  _She will strike if you don't strike first!_

 _Hurt Shepard? No. No, I can't hurt her,_ he began, but behind him the Thorian screamed.

 _You must if you want to be saved!_ the Voice shouted, and he wobbled in place, his vision clouding.  _Do it now, before she kills you!_

He lurched forward, though it was not like before, when he'd thrown himself in front of Ashley's shot. This time, it was with the distinct sensation of his limbs being positioned as if by puppet strings, jerking forward by a power not his own. He threw himself at Shepard and tackled her to the ground, pinning her hands over head.

_Do it now!_

She thrashed under him, but she was smaller than he was, and thought they were equal in strength he'd had the element of surprise. He'd taken away any leverage that she might have been able to use to throw him off. He pinned her wrists in one hand and moved the other to her throat, hovering, struggling desperately against it –

She took advantage of his indecision and punched him square in the nose, infusing it with so much force that it knocked him off her, sending him sprawling in the debris on the floor. "Kaidan, stop!" she shouted, but he'd already leapt up from the ground and tackled her again, and there they grappled in the dust and dirt, struggling to subdue, struggling to –

 _-This is wrong,_ another voice said, and this one was familiar – one he'd listened to all his life.

 _No –_ the Voice began.  _Kill her! Kill her before she destroys us both!_

_-No._

Another sick wave of pain rolled through his skull, and this one was the worst of them all, so potent that he arched backward, crying out in agony. His skull was on fire, he felt a hot rush of blood coursing down his nose, and when the Voice spoke again, it was infused with more power than Kaidan knew how to fight.  _ **DO IT NOW**_ , it ordered, the whisper that had become a scream, the voice that ruled the weak minds of organics –

He obeyed, though the weak part of him fought these commands every step of the way. Not Shepard, he begged the Voice. Not her, please not her. Just let her go, and I'll -

_**DO IT NOW.** _

He threw Shepard across the room with so much force that she sprawled, skidding across the floor, coming just shy of the lip of the chasm. She coughed, clutching her chest, struggling to breathe.

_**DO IT NOW.** _

The pain was blinding, deafening, and it erased all thought. He was aware of his hands moving to his side, drawing his pistol without his direct permission. He was aware of the mouth of the gun trembling as he drew and aimed, right at her head, right between her eyes –

Her eyes . . .

She looked up at him, and he saw everything in those eyes – everything he knew, everything he loved. Strength and kindness and beauty and love, and he – HE. WOULD. NOT.

He screamed when the fire lanced across his skull again, dropping him to the ground where he writhed like a bug skewered in a collection, shuddering as the pain wracked him without any hope of relief. He was burning alive, filled with pain and blood, raw nerves exposed, a thousand times more painful than any migraine he'd ever suffered.

But before the Voice could speak again and fill his mind with its lies, he curled inward to fortify himself, tensing, pushing through the pain. He aimed his shaking pistol at the last tendril, clinging to the wall. And he fired.

The grip on his mind was gone in one sudden instant, and he was aware enough to hear the Thorian screaming as it fell a thousand feet to its death. And then, there was blissful silence.

He was less a man and more a charred piece of firewood, his skull throbbing with an ache that refused to leave him even now that the Thorian was dead. He'd burned for a thousand years, and it hurt to open his eyes. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to be alive.

He heard Shepard dragging herself across the floor, and he felt a rough hand on his face, wiping away the blood. "Alenko," she rasped.

Shame was thick in his throat, and it made it difficult to speak. Or it was that he was a ravaged man, and each word he forced past his lips took a thousand years to form in pain? "I'm so sorry," he croaked. "I – I tried to ignore it– "

"Shh. Come on now." The only thing in life that did not hurt.

"I --" he tried to say through a thick throat. "I'm so sorry."

"I know, Alenko."

Gently, she cradled his face and brought her brow to his. And he wondered if he was imaging it – if it was another cruel hallucination summoned only to torment him – but when he felt her fingers brush across his cheek, it felt real enough. It was real enough.


	15. Chapter 15

"Can you stand?" Shepard asked him, her voice a hush.

He wasn't sure. His shoulder throbbed dully, in time with the wrenching pain that lingered in his skull. He'd grown accustomed to his headaches; they often developed in the middle of a mission, and so he'd learned how to tolerate them through professional necessity. This was different, though. He felt as if he suffered from a thousand migraines at the same time, each of them building endlessly on the others.

But he gritted his teeth and rolled to his feet, sucking in a breath as he nearly lost his balance. "Aye, ma'am."

She looked at him for a long moment, and for the first time he felt as if he didn't recognize her. He hardly recognized himself.

"Right," she said finally. "Let's get Williams and get the hell out of here."

It was slow work through the tunnels, made even more difficult by his pain and the slow, creeping horror as the last moments came to him, unimpeded by the haze the Thorian had clouded his mind with. He had – he had nearly killed her, because some creature wormed its way into his thoughts and turned them around; built fears from nothing, swayed him with lies and speculative worries.

At that moment, he had lost control. He hadn't mattered how hard he struggled against it; he'd succumbed, and he'd nearly killed his commanding officer in the process. Ignoring the legal and professional ramifications of such an act (regardless of a mind controlling creature), he'd nearly killed a woman whom his feelings for had become unprofessional and dangerous.

If only hadn't lied . . . if only he'd told her the truth when she asked if he'd been hearing voices. Perhaps this all would have been averted. 

He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to forgive himself for this.

"Commander?"

"Yeah?"

He corralled his thoughts into something coherent. "Did I hurt you?"

She rotated her shoulder, wincing a little. "You pack a punch, Lieutenant. No doubt about that."

"I'm –"

"I might have broken your nose though, so I guess we're even," she cut him off, and he saw a flash of her grin when the light of his pistol passed over her face, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. He was about to speak again when she held up her hands to silence him. "We'll talk about it when we get out of here. After you get your head looked at."

So she thought he was crazy, then. Possibly even dangerous. He deserved it. "Aye, ma'am."

"By Chakwas," she clarified, noting his expression. "If that thing rooting around your brain was anything like the Prothean beacon, you'll need her to put your head back on straight."

How was it that she still cared about what happened to him, even after what he'd nearly done to her? He turned away, as it had become painful to look at her too long.

"Williams!" Shepard called, her voice echoing through the enclosure. "Can you hear me?"

Silence.

"What did you do to her?" Shepard asked him, frowning.

"Just put her in stasis. After, uh, the Thorian took control, I wasn't bothering to keep it up."

"Maybe you knocked her out?

Another thing to wallow in guilt over. "Maybe."

"Shit," Shepard muttered. "Come on."

They continued on in the darkness, though this time Kaidan had the distinct sensation of being watched. The silence was tight and preoccupied; watchful silence of eyes in the dark. Shepard called out again, her rifle drawn and ready to fire, her eyes narrowed into slits.

They heard a voice in front of them, and Kaidan let out a breath in relief. It was Ashley, upright and completely unharmed. Though as the moment passed, he realized that something wasn't right. Ashley had her back to them, and her gun was drawn, pointed at the crumpled form of an asari Kaidan didn't recognize.

"Ma'am!" Ashley called. "I got something!"

Shepard sprinted ahead, careful to keep the aim of her gun level. "What is it?"

"I don't know, ma'am. I, uh – I came out of the stasis when the Thorian died, and I saw a node on the wall shrivel up and fade away or something. She fell out of it."

"Who is she?"

Ashley shrugged. "Hasn't said anything yet." There was a pause, and Ashley swallowed in a manner that Kaidan recognized quite well. "Ma'am, I'm . . . I'm sorry. For what happened. That thing crawled in my head, and . . ."

"Don't worry about it for now," Shepard said. "Let's handle this first."

"Aye, ma'am."

Shepard crouched down to the level of the unconscious asari, who moaned when Shepard prodded her with the muzzle of her gun. "Can you hear me?" she asked in a loud, carrying voice.

The asari's eyes shot open, and she flinched away from Shepard as if she had been burned. "N-no! Get away!" she rasped, clutching her chest and scooting away over the rubble. "P-please, I don't know anything . . . "

"I think you do," Shepard said. "What's your name?"

"I-" The asari looked as if she honestly had to struggle to remember this information, as if she had existed without a name for so long that it had ceased to exist. But finally, he saw trembling recognition bloom over her terrified features. "Shiala," she whispered. It almost sounded like a question.

"Shiala," Shepard echoed. "What were you doing down here?"

"The Voice," Shiala whispered, pulling her arms tightly around herself and rocking from side to side. "I was a whisper of the Voice."

"Were you always down here?"

"Was I? I – I don't remember." The asari looked horrified. "I can't remember anything."

"Take your time," Shepard said. 

Shiala nodded numbly. "Y-yes. I – I was . . . I was an asari, before I was of the Voice. I – I traveled with my mistress. She left me here. She . . . she traded me for something she wanted. She wanted it more than me."

"Who was your mistress?"

This time Shiala reacted as if she'd been struck across the face. She brought her trembling hands up to her cheeks and keened. Shepard looked over her shoulder, searching for the exit, her face brightening as she did so. "How about you come with me? We can go to my ship, get you looked at."

"No!" Shiala hissed. "No ships. P-please, no ships. They whisper too, like the voice. They – they know things they shouldn't."

Shepard held up her hands. "Okay, no ships." She shared a tight look with Kaidan, gesturing for him to kneel beside her with a quirk of her chin. While Shiala moaned her pain, she leaned close to whisper to him. "Any ideas?"

He had a few. "I think this woman's mistress was Matriarch Benezia."

His suspicions were confirmed when Shiala gasped, hiding her face. "Do not speak her name," she hissed ferociously, scrabbling for a rock to clutch in her fist like a dagger. "Do not. You will bring her back."

"We won't," Shepard promised gently. "Do you remember why she traded you to the Voice? Do you remember what she wanted?"

Shiala was silent, thinking hard, bringing her fingers to her brow as if to stimulate the thoughts that way. "She wanted the Cipher."

"What is that?"

"It's . . . it's a way. To understand the visions. The Prothean visions. For her master."

"Saren," breathed Ashley.

"Her master needed the Cipher to understand. To know where to go."

Kaidan saw a swift look of recognition cross Shepard's features like clouds over the sun, and as he watched her lean closer to Shiala, suddenly intent, he understood it as well. The vision from the Prothean beacon was nothing more than a series of unrelated images, and if Saren had used the Cipher to understand the vision, then Shepard needed to understand it as well. "Did you learn the Cipher too, Shiala?"

Shiala pulled strips of skin away from her nails until they bled. "Not because of mistress. B-but the Voice . . . the Voice knew it still. And I knew what the Voice did. I learned, though I wanted to be blind and deaf and dumb to it. To stop the whispers. I would have done anything." She trailed off, trembling.

"It's very important that I learn the Cipher too," Shepard said, unable to curb her intensity. "Do you think you could show me? Just this one last time? And then you could forget, and no one will ever need it from you again."

"Why do you need it?"

"To stop your mistress, and her master. They have done horrible things to many, and they must be stopped."

"No one can stop them," Shiala muttered. "I tried, but she threw me down, and then I only heard the Voice. I tried . . . "

"I will stop them," Shepard said again. "The Voice couldn't touch me. Nothing else they could do will stop me either."

"Do you lie, like the Voice?" Shiala said, her voice a sharp blade of accusation.

"No," Shepard said. "I don't lie."

And Kaidan heard that truth was not only situational, but that she lived her entire life by it. That she held her honesty closely as a code, a shield, a carefully forged set of armor. He didn't think he'd ever grow beyond the shame of having doubted her.

He saw that Shiala had come to the same conclusion. It was impossible to doubt the sincerity in Shepard, how it radiated from the intensity in her gaze. Slowly, she nodded and picked herself up from the rubble, standing with her feet shoulder-width apart, brushing the dust and muck off her knees. "I will show you, then," Shiala said, fixing Shepard with a bright, uncomfortable stare.

"Shepard," Kaidan said suddenly, and when she stood he pulled her aside before it occurred to him that touching her again was a stupid, horrible idea, especially considering what had happened only minutes before. He dropped her arm as if it had burned him.

"What is it?"

"I – I don't know if you should trust her," he said in a rush, keeping his voice low so that only they could hear. "If this is a trick and she gets into your head, she could make the visions worse. She could drive you insane. I've read what some asari do with their abilities, and weak as she is, it would definitely be within her power."

"If the Cipher makes a difference, though . . ." Shepard trailed off, glancing over his shoulder to Shiala. "We can't afford to be cautious, not when Saren has the Cipher and we don't."

"Shepard, I . . ." He fell silent. He wanted to offer to bear the Cipher himself, on the chance that Shiala would try to hurt Shepard through the transfer. They could afford to lose him, easily. But the galaxy needed her still – more than she realized. He wanted to tell her that it was his duty to offer himself up like this, and for a thousand reasons. Moments ago, he had almost killed her. And in the beginning, she had saved him from the Prothean beacon, letting it ravage her mind when he'd been the one to trigger it. "Let me do it."

She was stunned. "Alenko, that's . . . very noble of you, but it won't work."

"Liara can merge them; I'm certain of it."

"Even if she could, I'm not about to let you subject yourself to more mental strain," Shepard said, stern. "Not after what the Thorian did to you."

"Yes, Commander," he said quietly, cowed.

Shepard turned away from him and faced Shiala, her expression tight and resolute. "Are you ready?" the asari asked her.

She nodded quickly. "Do it."

Shiala closed her eyes and murmured something too quietly for Kaidan to hear. She shook as if bullied by a sharp wind, her slim fingers trembling at her temples, her jaw steel cable tight. When she opened her eyes again, they were black as coal.

Shepard went rigid as Shiala entered her mind, each muscle engaged in agony or effort, Kaidan didn't know. He watched her desperately for any sign of pain, but this was nothing like the Prothean beacon. Where it had forced itself into Shepard's mind with blunt force and brutality, Shiala seemed to ease the information across the breach, gently almost. Slowly, each taut muscle went slack until Shepard remained upright only through habit.

And then, almost as suddenly as they had begun, it was over. Shepard opened her eyes and held a hand to her brow, perhaps to pinch a dull ache there, and the pit of guilt that had made its home in Kaidan's gut gave a desperate thrill. But she turned to him and nodded, and though he knew everything was different now, there remained that small mercy that whatever Shiala had done, it had not inflicted any further damage than he had himself.

* * *

They did not remain on Feros for long. Shiala elected to stay with the colonists and help them rebuild, in no small part due to her fear of ships. When prodded for more information on Saren's ship, though, she curled up on herself and refused to answer, and in that manner, things were settled.

Shepard felt guilty for leaving the colony as they did, though Arcelia grudgingly admitted that their situation was vastly improved from as things had been before. The Thorian was dead and the geth had been routed, and so the colonists were therefore able to resume their operations without interference from either. Before Shepard boarded the Normandy, Arcelia held out her hand and muttered grudging thanks under her breath.

The Council wasn't pleased, of course. "It's a shame that you were not able to save the Thorian, Commander," Councilor Valern said, his arms crossed over his skinny chest. "There is much we could have learned from it."

She stared at the holographic images of the three of them, regarding her as some kind of misbehaving child. "The Thorian was an exceptionally dangerous creature that managed to enslave the minds of the colonists, not to mention my crew," Shepard said from between her clenched teeth. "I doubt it would have allowed you to study it without doing the same."

"We'll never know, now," Valern said with a huff.

Her fingers twitched over the disconnect as she fantasized how satisfying it would be to hang up on these pompous, out-of-touch idiots. But she swallowed her temper and arranged her expression into one of contrition. "I'll do better next time," she ground out.

"Indeed. Proceed to your next destination with no delay."

"The Normandy is in need of a provisioning run," she said. "We'll resume operations after."

Councilor Sparatus scowled. "Don't take too long," he said before ending the call.

She was left to contend with her temper in the silence that followed. They treated her as if she had no idea of the scope of her mission, and the ramifications should she fail. As if she were little better than a child gallivanting around the galaxy, failing to consider the things adults eat and breathe and live.

She strode from the comm room and attempted to swallow the sharp edge of her temper. She wasn't going to be made to feel guilty for taking care of her ship and her crew. She wasn't going to force them to go without a chance to rest for a day or so while the Normandy provisioned on the Citadel.

Shepard hovered by the entrance of the crew deck, frowning. There were two conversations she needed to have now that they were all safe on the ship, on their way toward Citadel space. She knew the words she needed to say, the rules she needed to reinforce, and the questions that she require answers to. And yet, at the same time, now that there was nothing else that required her attention, she found herself straddling the line between apprehension and fear.

Faced with three unpleasant prospects, she chose the least of them first. Perhaps it was cowardly, but she made a living throwing herself in dozens of dangerous situations. She figured she'd earned the privilege of a little cowardice. Besides Liara would help her decipher the Cipher later, and Kaidan needed rest after what he'd gone through.

She found Ashley wandering on the lower decks, pacing tight circles around the punching bag with a pinched, unhappy expression on her face. When she caught Shepard's eye, she froze like a deer caught in headlights, her eyes wide. "Commander!" she said formally, snapping into a salute. "What can I do for you?"

Shepard shifted slightly from foot to foot. "We need to talk about what happened," she said quietly, unwillingly. "About the Thorian."

It was as if she'd pressed a pin into a balloon. Ashley visibly deflated, averting her eyes out of shame. "Yes, ma'am."

"I'm not going to yell, you know," Shepard said, peering a little closer with her hands clasped behind her back. "I'm not even upset."

"You should be," Ashley said. "I would be, if I were you."

"It's a good thing I'm not, then, is it?"

"Yeah." Ashley took a steadying breath. "So I guess you want to know what happened, right?"

"I would appreciate it."

With a resolute nod, Ashley launched into her explanation. "I started hearing the whispers almost as soon as we went into the complex. It . . . it knew things that no one should know. Things that I didn't even know for sure, not until it told me. I've been thinking about it, and I think that's how it gets in your head; laying the groundwork with some small, easy truths, and then when the time comes, it just . . . it takes control."

"How do you mean?"

"Like, there was this part of me that knew what I was doing was wrong – it was screaming at me to stop, but I couldn't. I felt like it had taken control of my body, like it was moving me forward step by step, drawing my gun, aiming it – aiming it at you, ma'am."

Shepard considered this, tapping her chin. "Did you fight it?"

"Hell yes I fought it!" Ashley burst out. "It's not a great feeling, losing control of yourself like that. You start thinking about how much you take it for granted – being able to decide where to put what, what to do when. All that. Can you imagine? Something forcing its way into your head, moving your hands, your body, and then when it's gone you have to come to terms with it all. How much was it forcing you . . . and how much was already in your head? I don't know," she trailed off, running her hand over her head, mussing her hair. "I don't know."

"You thought about shooting me before then?" Shepard asked with some alarm.

"No! Of course not. But it said things . . ." she broke off, shuddering.

"Like?"

"It – it accused me of being weak. Of . . ." Ashley let out another trembling breath. "It said I was a coward. And that I'd always be a coward, as long as I lived. No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did – even considering the good things, things I know I did right. It said that if I hadn't been a coward, my squad on Eden Prime would have lived. And on and on . . . that sort of thing."

Pity nearly crushed the breath from Shepard's lungs. "Christ," she breathed.

"Yeah." Ashley picked at her hands. "And it started saying . . . just bullshit. Stuff that I  _knew_  was wrong, but I couldn't help considering it anyway. It said that if I helped it, I wouldn't be a coward; I'd be its savior. I'd finally have done something right. And there was still this part of me that was yelling 'No, dammit, don't listen!' but it got quieter and quieter, until I just couldn't hear it anymore. And I wondered if it had even existed in the first place.

"After that . . . well, you know the rest," she said, her head bowed.

"Christ," Shepard said again, completely at a loss.

"I'm really sorry," Ashley whispered. "I don't even think I can say how sorry I am. Like – words don't cut it, you know?"

"Ashley, you don't –"

"Just let me get this out. I just need you to know that I'm behind you, one-hundred percent. I'll do my best for you, and if it came down to it . . . well, I'd give my life for you and this mission. You're my CO, and that's what you're supposed to do. I just need to make sure you know that."

She was so earnest that Shepard felt a wave of pity nearly overcome her. Instead, she gripped Ashley's shoulder and gave her a little shake – her own stupid, awkward assurance, the only she knew how to give. "I hope it doesn't come to that," she said. "But thank you. The circumstances were extraordinary, and as such I don't think any further action is necessary."

"I'd deserve it, if you thought there was," Ashley said.

"Come on."

Ashley sighed, popping her knuckles. "All right. Thanks ma'am."

"Don't mention it."

Ashley was quiet for a moment, "I haven't even been able to talk to Kaidan, yet," she said, agitated. "I mean, for crying out loud, I  _shot_  him. I would have shot you if he didn't jump in front – it was too fast, too fast to do anything else."

"He's fine," Shepard assured her. "Chakwas fixed him up without a problem."

"He was really upset," Ashley said, almost as if she hadn't heard, as if that hadn't been her full concern. "What happened after I – after he put me down?"

Shepard considered for a moment, frowning. "The Thorian did the same thing to him that it did to you."

"Jesus," Ashley muttered. "And did he . . .?"

"He started to," Shepard said quietly. "But he broke out of it somehow. He'd thrown me across the room and had a pistol pointed to my head, and I could see that it was trying to get him to shoot me. But . . . he didn't. He broke free, even though it really hurt him to do it. He was screaming, twitching – I can't even imagine how difficult it must have been. He shot the Thorian instead."

"Wow," Ashley breathed. "He's got a good head on him."

Shepard almost smiled. "He does."

"I bet you anything he's beating himself up for almost hurting you," Ashley said knowingly.

"Weren't you?"

"Yeah, but . . . it's different for him."

Something twisted in Shepard's gut; a mad lurch forward, as if the ground had dropped from under her. "What are you talking about?"

Ashley pressed her lips tightly together, shaking her head. "Ah . . . it's not my place to say," she said slowly, unwillingly. "I shouldn't have said anything in the first place."

"I could order you to tell me."

"Yeah, but you won't." Ashley jerked her chin to her bench. "I'm going to get back to work. If you see the LT, maybe tell him I got a few things to say to him."

"I'll tell him."

With a salute and a tentative smile, Ashley turned back to her bench, and Shepard was left contemplating a conversation she'd really rather not have at the moment. She felt exhausted, as if she'd spoken with Ashley for days instead of minutes, all while running on a treadmill.

She thought of Kaidan's face – the heartbreaking expression, his brows pulled low over hurting eyes, lips curved downward. She thought of the unrecognizable way his face had betrayed the possession of the Thorian, and how there had been almost nothing behind those expressive eyes; how they had been dead and hard, dark as pitch.

But she had seen Kaidan struggle through. She had seen him fight against the Thorian to the point of extreme pain, all to keep from hurting her. And she knew that she couldn't maintain her silence against him, for she knew that she wasn't afraid of being hurt by him. She was afraid, but not of that.

With a steadying breath, she took the lift up to the med bay and tried to steel herself against the inevitable. 


	16. Chapter 16

Kaidan was no stranger to guilt. In fact, as far as it went for people, he was pretty well acquainted with the feeling – the way it curdled in his gut like soured meat, the way it turned over and over again in his thoughts without any hope of rest or reprieve, until he thought he'd go mad from the inertia of it. And from all manner of situations too; from destroying his mother's garden as a child to accidentally killing a turian instructor at BAaT in defense of a girl that he liked. He'd run the gamut.

All in all, he was pretty damn familiar with the whole song and dance. So he shouldn't have been surprised at how awful he felt.

As soon as they stepped aboard the Normandy, he strode away in pursuit of his mindless, comforting routine. He stripped out of his filthy armor and disassembled his guns through a haze, only partially noting that they were choked with dust from the Thorian's lair. (Ashley was not going to be pleased). He showered, scrubbing off a coat of grime that was nearly a quarter-inch thick on his skin, dully wincing when soap seeped through the bandage on his shoulder. He submitted to secondary examination by Dr. Chakwas, and her voice seemed to come to him from across a great distance. And he resumed his duties as best as he was able, though the glare of his console came dangerously close to triggering another migraine.

He had hoped in vain that the Thorian's attempt at controlling his mind would make the memories impenetrable, so that he would be haunted only by a vague sense that he'd done something monstrously wrong. But the details seemed to be etched beneath his eyelids. He saw his own hands reaching for Shepard – not in tenderness, but with the intent to hurt – and he felt it when they closed around her throat. He remembered the weight of her body as he sent her flying across the room, watching as she nearly toppled off the lip of the chasm. He remembered her hands claw-like against her chest, coughing as she struggled to breathe, a smudge of blood on her cheek, dust in her hair, the curve of her bent inward –

Kaidan was not the kind of man who was prone to giving himself credit where it was due. He hardly remembered that in the end, he had been able to break the grip of the Thorian, and that all three of them were able to climb out of the creature's lair and back into the daylight, relatively unharmed. He forgot that they had completed their mission on Feros with mostly decent results – only a few casualties, the colony itself set to rights, the Thorian destroyed. Instead, he fixated on his failures, and in his mind they were many.

If he'd been a more forgiving sort, he might have attempted to console himself with the fact that everyone had been affected by the Voice, and that the colonists had bent under its will with hardly any fight. But he couldn't even tell himself this, for when it came down to it, Shepard had been completely unaffected. She was made of infinitely stronger stuff than he.

And in this, he knew that he did not deserve her in any form – not as a Commander, not as a friend, not as a beautiful woman that he suspected he was coming to love.

After a few hours of fruitlessly attempting to finish the leftover calibrations he'd assigned himself, he slumped down the wall opposite his console and threaded his hands through his damp hair. He'd been too preoccupied to comb it into submission, and it would not be long before it'd dry and curl into disarray, but for once he was too upset to be bothered by this eventuality. Instead he pinched his brow and counted in multiples of six, syncing his breathing in time to every other answer.

He'd reached four hundred sixty-eight when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching, and he knew the exact cadence of them as well as he knew the exact cadence of his own heartbeat. He opened one eye in time to see Shepard bring one hand to her mouth, and he might not have seen the grin she struggled to hide had he looked a second later.

"What's funny?" he asked her.

"Oh – it's just that . . . well. I know I'm an asshole for thinking this, but you're kind of adorable when you're miserable." 

"And you're sure I'm miserable right now?" he asked, less dismayed than he knew he should be.

"Well, look at you. I've never seen you in such a state." Her grin widened. "I had no idea you have curly hair."

He swatted at his head, flattening his unruly hair in an ultimately futile gesture. "Forget you saw it and you'll never see it again."

"Oh come on. I think it's nice," she said, but this time she made a game attempt to swallow her smile. "You know you're up pretty late again."

"Lost track of time, and all."

"I figured. Mind if I join you for a bit?"

"Not at all."

He made to get to his feet, but she held out her hands. "Just stay put, all right? This is an informal visit."

"You'd prefer to let me have it informally, then?" he said quietly.

"I'm not going to let you have it at all," she said decisively, and with a huff she slid down the wall opposite him and straightened her legs so that if she had a mind to, she could jab him in the side with her foot.

He gaped at her, too surprised to attempt to hide how stunned he was by this admission. "Why not?"

She didn't respond immediately, looking down at her hands, running her thumb over nails that had been long since chewed down to ragged stubs. "You think I'm being a shitty Commander if I don't rake you over the coals, right?"

"I don't know what I think," he managed. "I think I'd deserve it if you decided to kick me off your ship, honestly."

"There's no need for that," she said firmly. "I'll tell you what I put in my official report, the one that I literally just sent off to Admiral Hackett, and maybe that'll help you understand where I'm coming from, how's that sound?"

"Sounds like more than I deserve."

She ignored this with great dignity and began her recitation. "On the remote colony of Feros, we were confronted by a populace affected by some form of mind control, initiated by an ancient organism with as of yet untested powers to that effect. Exo-Geni was interested in testing these abilities against the colonists, and by the time we arrived most of them had been under its control for a period of two months, if not longer. My crew and I infiltrated the Thorian's complex, and after some struggle we were able to exterminate it." She took a breath. "Then I wrote about the bit with Shiala and the Cipher, the exact number and nature of the causalities, which were minor. Etcetera."

"'After some struggle'?" he asked her, his brows flattening into a straight line. "That's putting it pretty mildly, isn't it?"

"Maybe," she shrugged. "The point is nothing serious ended up happening, so I didn't see fit to enumerate your exact mistakes. Should you have told me you were hearing the voice? Absolutely. Should Williams have done the same? You bet. But let me ask you something:" and with this she leaned over her knees, her gaze intent, "Are you going to make that same mistake again?"

"Not on your life."

"You see?" She leaned back against the wall, grinning in a knowing manner. "Now, if you did make the same mistake again, I would have to bring it up. But the way I see it, no one died. No one was seriously hurt. Because of that, I think you're allowed a little latitude."

"I don't agree," he said stiffly. "Maybe I didn't kill you, but I could have. And if I hadn't jumped in the way of the shot, Williams might have blown your head off."

"She might have, but she didn't. You might have, but you didn't. You could ruminate over the what-ifs until you were old and grey, and it wouldn't do you any bit of good right now. It's purely academic, and it doesn't have a place in the here and now."

"Sure it does," he argued. "It's good to be prepared. It's good to acknowledge what a subordinate is capable of, and if they can be trusted or not."

"And you think I can't trust you now, is that it?" Shepard asked him sharply. "Jesus Christ, Alenko. How else do you want me to say it? That thing had crawled into your mind, and while the others ended up bending under what it wanted, you broke free, though it hurt you. I – I mean, it looked like it was about to kill you from my vantage point, but you didn't back down. It wanted you to shoot me, and you shot it instead." Her tone became soft, and though he knew he didn't deserve the comfort, he didn't resist the urge to fold himself in the gentleness of her voice, and the knowledge it was solely for him. "Do you know how impressive that is? I spent the whole afternoon digging up crap on the Thorian and its capabilities at the Exo-Geni base. I learned that it's able to subvert entire cities to its total control, and yet you shucked that thing off you."

"Not without effort," he grumbled.

"Sure, okay. You had to work at it. But can you at least admit to me that you know that was impressive?"

He looked away, frustrated and embarrassed. "It would have been more impressive if the thing hadn't gotten into my mind in the first place."

"For the love of god, Alenko!" she exploded, her eyes bright with temper, and he recoiled at the force of it, lashing through the otherwise silent crew deck like a whip. "You want me to leave you alone down here, stewing in your guilt? Dump you off at the Citadel with an angry note pinned to your chest? Would it make you feel better if I yelled at you?!"

"You're yelling at me right now," he pointed out before he could stop himself.

There was a part of him that expected she would smack him for his insubordination; hell, he wouldn't have blamed her in the least. But she paused mid-rant, the way he'd seen young children do just before they let loose a wail that will take the head right off your shoulders. She did not wail, though; instead, she laughed, a slight chuckle that came from between her lips almost without her permission, and she clapped one hand to her mouth as if to keep it away. "I sure am. Feel better?"

And surprisingly, he did. "I think so."

"Thank god," she said, and she did not attempt to hide her smile now. "This pitiful crap was making my stomach hurt."

"Can't have that," he said, more of an echo than a real sentiment, but he was only just growing accustomed to the lightening in his chest, the realization that she looked at him with bright eyes and a wide smile, and that there was no fear there.

The memories of what he'd done were not so easily shaken, though. As they sat in growing silence he caught a glimpse of her tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, her hand hovering just at her throat for a moment, and he remembered his own hands reaching for her pale neck, the tendons tight with intention, fingers twitching as he struggled against the voice. He shuddered, and though the Thorian was long dead, he could not shake the fear that at any moment, he would hear the Voice again, and he would be a slave to its will.

Shepard insisted that to entertain what-ifs was purely academic, but he found that the possible outcomes of their mission haunted him. What if he hadn't broken out of the Thorian's control? What if he'd turned the pistol to his Commander and wounded her, or even killed her? He'd have a hell of a thing to explain at the inevitable court-marshal, to say nothing of the fact that he'd have to live with the memory of doing such a thing to her – this woman that had grown so precious to him that he could no more ascertain her worth than he could weigh the stuff of stars with his own hands.

It all came back to the moment he'd lied to her. Had it been any other Commander on the field, he knew for certain that he would have answered the question promptly and honestly. There was no question in his mind; he was normally dutiful and exacting, and never before in his career had such a question given him pause. He realized that he had lied because he cared about Shepard, and there was a shameful bit of pride in him that could not stand for her to know that he struggled with demons, that he'd committed a horrific crime in his youth, that he ultimately was nothing, and he'd never come close to deserving her company or attention.

"Hey," she said softly, looking up at him.

"Hm?"

"You're thinking about it."

"Yeah," he admitted. "Look, Shepard … I know you don't think that I did anything wrong –"

"Well, that's not exactly true," she cut in delicately. "You should have told me about the voices. When we're on the field and on duty, I am your Commander, and it's no good when you answer my questions with a lie. But I don't think you need to beat yourself up over this Thorian thing."

"But that's what I mean," he said quietly. "I lied to you – my Commander. That is unacceptable." 

"Why did you?" 

Kaidan took note of her eyes – so wide that they were nearly perfect circles. She did not seem to breathe, for he watched her closely for several seconds and she was frozen into complete stillness, like a rabbit that had met the gaze of a predator across a snowy forest glade. He couldn't shake the feeling that she struggled with the instinct to run. He hated that she was afraid, and he hated that he found her beautiful at this moment – always inappropriately, always out of place, always impossible to contain or control.

"I don't know," he lied, though he hated himself for it. Perhaps they had crossed a threshold in this conversation, but there was always a part of Kaidan that would choose to leave himself a way out, and in this most dangerous excursion, that was never truer than at this exact moment. "It twisted me up. Turned how I feel about you around."

"How you feel about me?"

His stomach twisted. "All these conversations we seem to have," he explained stupidly. "I like you more than any Commander I've ever had."

"Well, I am pretty fantastic," she said, though the joke fell flat, undercut by the breathlessness of her voice.

"Not just that. I can't remember any time where I've sat and talked like this with my Commanding officer, and yet you and I seem to be making a habit of it."

"If you'd rather I didn't—" she began.

"But that's it; I'd rather you did," he burst out before he could stop himself. "So that's all I'm saying. It turned that around in my head."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don't think you're weak at all. I think only an incredibly strong willed person would have been able to break out of the Thorian's control, which is exactly what you did. And … well, I know it's weird. But I wouldn't trade having you at my back, Alenko. You're a damn good soldier, and I trust you. That hasn't changed. In fact," she said, and her lips pulled into a sweet smile, "I think I can safely say I trust you more, now."

"Ma'am?"

"Well, think about it," she said with a little shrug. "If not even the mighty Thorian could make you hurt me, I'd say I'm probably pretty safe with you under normal circumstances. Don't you think?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

She was quiet a moment, pulling at a loose thread at her knees. "I was wondering something, though."

"Yeah?"

"How were you able to break free? I knew that it wanted you to shoot me, but the second it pointed your gun at me, I saw you break out of it. And – god, you were screaming like it was slicing your brain to ribbons, but you broke free anyway. And I guess I'm a bit … well, it's kind of morbid curiosity, almost. How were you able to do that?"

"Like how was I able to push through the pain?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe because I get migraines, you know. I'm used to that kind of pain."

"Still. I saw a vid of some criminal getting electrocuted once – because I heard my mom talking about how they used to punish people like that in the twentieth century – for especially bad crimes or something. It was really fucking horrible – like your insides get cooked in your own body, and – well, it was one of the worst things I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. Anyway, I bring it up because watching you get flayed by that thing reminded me so badly of it I thought that you were going to die."

"It wasn't that bad, I expect," Kaidan hedged.

"You always do that," she said. "Downplay what you feel. I thought you said you were going to try to be more honest, remember?"

He let out a breath in defeat. "You're right. Yeah, I felt like I was dying."

"So something's crawled into your mind, trying to make you do its nasty work, but instead of folding you resist, even though it feels like it's going to kill you. It might have, even; I talked to Chakwas, and she said that you were in danger of a hemorrhage. But you did it anyway."

"You make it sound much better than it was."

"Am I not allowed to be a little impressed, at least?" she said with a grin. "Face it, LT; you're an impressive man. I am highly, deeply,  _utterly_ impressed."

"Why do I get the feeling you're not being serious?"

"Now, what would give you that impression?" she teased. "I'm the very picture of decorum. Commander hospital-corners, they call me."

"I'm pretty sure I heard Ashley call  _me_ that, actually."

Shepard snickered. "Yeah, she might have. Not telling where she got it from."

"You don't even need to; I see it all over your face."

She jabbed him in the side with her foot, smirking. "You hush. Maybe I haven't decided if I forgive you, yet."

"You can't keep going back and forth. You have to choose one and stick with it, Shepard. Ah – ma'am."

"How about you lay off this off duty ma'am stuff, all right?" she said, jabbing him again. "My mother was a ma'am. I'm half her age."

"Yes, ma'am."

He could see that she very much wanted to be stern and austere, but she took one look at his exaggerated expression of calm and dissolved into giggles. "You can be really horrible sometimes, you know that?"

"I don't mean any harm," he told her, unable to bite back his own answering smile, completely charmed by the mischief and joy in her eyes. Had he been miserable before? Just about to resign himself and request a transfer out of shame? He could hardly recall those thoughts now, for they had grown incredibly distant the longer they spoke, hardly a sound at the edge of hearing.

"At least you have that going for you; if you were a malicious asshole, I'd have to wipe the floor with you. And I hardly need to remind you that I can quite easily."

"No reminder needed."

"Yeah, yeah."

They fell into amicable silence as she resumed her campaign against the loose thread in her fatigues. Normally he was moderately circumspect when it came to his admiration of her, but at the moment he was unable to avert his eyes in the name of prudence. He was like a moth drawn to flame, the flame of her hair against the pale skin of her neck, the slightly overlarge upper lip, the scar that cut across the bridge of her nose. She was heartbreakingly beautiful, and he felt the longer he went without reminding her of this, the more potent the feeling grew in him, the words burgeoning at the back of his throat, on the flat of his tongue.

It might have been easier if they were civilians. Kaidan wasn't often prone to regretting his choice of career – in fact, he could quite honestly say that he was happily a career man – but in this one, vital subject he envied the civilian, for most often their cages were ones of personal fears instead of ones imposed by the regulations and the Charter. They were free in a way that he would never know, and he desperately envied them for it when he looked at Shepard and wondered what it would be like to kiss her, to feel her body against his, to know that their belonging was a mutual sort, and not so easily brushed aside.

She looked up and met his gaze, and before he might have broken it by looking away or saying something stupid, but now he felt trapped by it. His brush with horrific failure had unbalanced him, making the rules that he clung to seem foolish and far away. He did not avert his eyes when he should have, and neither did she. He was aware of his heart beating stridently against the wall of his chest, so loud that he knew she must be able to hear it – an audible indication of the tension that had risen between them. She was that rabbit frozen in the glade again, but her eyes were filled with the shape of something he felt in himself, something vast and formless, something uncontrollable.

He wanted to kiss her so badly that every second spent hovering in this grey halfway place was a moment suspended in resonant pain, an ache that settled somewhere in his chest. He saw his own hand clenched in his lap, struggling against the last shred of control that wailed about the regs and the consequences and everything that he stood to lose. But that voice was fading, and he was bewitched by all that he stood to gain.

Abruptly she looked away, her face reddening, and the spell was broken in that sharp instant. "I should probably turn in," she laughed nervously, stumbling to her feet like a drunkard.

He shot up after her, so furious with himself that his voice trembled. "Right."

"Have a good one, Lieutenant," she said, offering him a half wave before turning on her heel and fleeing in the direction of the elevator.

He watched her go with a sinking heart, cursing himself for his unfortunate stupidity and complete lack of control. But he noticed that before she rounded the corner to the lift, she hesitated briefly, her fingers brushing the wall, and he wondered if she imagined that it was his skin that she touched, his face that she reached for.


	17. Chapter 17

Shepard wandered the empty decks for the rest of the night, too frazzled and embarrassed to sneak back around to her cabin and make a half-hearted attempt at a full night of sleep. When was the last time she'd gotten a solid eight hours, anyway? Probably before this whole mess started.

She'd gotten pretty good at pushing through general exhaustion in order to fulfill her duties; in fact, if prompted she could probably write a book full with little tricks and tips that filled her tired limbs with energy, and pulled her weary eyes wide. It would be better if she had any duties to fulfill at the moment, but of course everything was neatly taken care of, and the she had nothing to distract herself with until they reached the Citadel for provisioning. Instead, her exhaustion was restless; the kind denied her the solace of distraction in its many forms.

The Normandy was almost a different ship during the sleep cycle. Only a skeleton crew remained awake to monitor functions and maintain their present course, and as Shepard wandered the nearly empty decks she was possessed by the feeling that she walked among the Normandy's long abandoned ruin, rather than the ship alive and well, hurtling through the void at a speed faster than light.

Or maybe she was only projecting her own loneliness on an inanimate object. That was possible too.

But ships weren't just objects, where they? Instead of growing up on some dirtball colony or one of the many over-saturated urban areas of Earth, she'd grown up on a ship – maybe not one like the Normandy, but like it enough to invite some comparison. She'd learned the rumble of the eezo core much like she learned the voice of her mother, and the subtle sound of the riveted armor plating shifting as it launched in and out of FTL, hurtling through the darkness like a juggernaut, unstoppable and secure, stable under her feet.

She'd loved that ship like she loved her mother – learned all the secret places, the hidden corners that perfectly fit a child, the nooks where she could be best left alone when she wanted. Now, though . . . well, those slavers hadn't only taken her mother from her.

If she was made to choose, she'd choose Hannah Shepard over getting that stupid ship back, but really in her most secret and childish of hearts, she'd rather have them both. She'd rather have those days where she bounded from one end of the frigate to the other, so desperate to seek out the shadowed corners of the galaxy that she couldn't see a good thing staring her right in the face.

So that's what this was, Shepard thought dimly as she wandered through the CIC, without a purpose or place. Homesickness? Loneliness?

She thought of Kaidan, probably still hunched in front of his console, batting down his flyaway hair, and the ache that had settled just south of her heart gave a dull twinge. There was a strength to him that she found fascinating, and a sweetness that terrified her. She was entranced and enchanted and scared out of her fucking mind.

The comparison was cliché – she distinctly remembered a similar one being made in some ancient literature she'd worked through during schooling – but she found that she'd rather relive the Skyllian Blitz every day for the rest of her life than deal with this. Because she'd have to deal with it sooner or later – that was set in stone. There was going to have to be a discussion about the regs, and potentially another discussion about reassignment if either of them couldn't figure out how to do their jobs without wanting to fuck each other senseless.

That wasn't all of it, though; if only it was. She caught herself losing control of the situation on the field more times than she felt comfortable admitting. She remembered Fai Dan, struggling to keep his gun pointed away from Kaidan as the Voice turned his body into its puppet, and it had taken every ounce of willpower she possessed not to blow his head off that instant, even though he wasn't a direct threat. She remembered watching Kaidan being thrown across the room by a missile, and at that moment she lost sense of the rest of the battlefield – the geth, Ashley screaming at her to take cover before she activated another incendiary; all she remembered was the screaming panic that sent her mind shuddering to a halt.

But now, in the quiet of her contemplation mingled with the nearly absolute silence of the Normandy, she was forced to contend with the suspicion that her judgment might be compromised. She'd asked a question on the field, and both Ashley and Kaidan responded with a lie. This wasn't something she'd tolerated before; not even close. Once, an especially green recruit had lied to her about the status of his guts, and she'd nearly torn him a new asshole for lying after he lost his lunch all over the launch shuttle. She didn't tolerate lies – they were a sore spot.

So was it admirable that she could do so now, for two soldiers with whom she'd grown fairly close over this assignment? Or was it a problem?

Shepard entered the cockpit and approached Joker like she imagined a Commander would – back straight, perfectly assured, etcetera – though she knew it wouldn't make much of a difference for Joker. As soldiers went, he was largely unaffected by pomp. "Report, Flight Lieutenant."

Joker nodded toward his console, and did not take his eyes away. "Few hours out from the Citadel, Commander. There was some trouble with the bearing earlier, but I fixed it without too much trouble." He seemed to remember what time it was, for he turned back to her with a slightly arched eyebrow. "You're up kind of early, aren't you?"

"Technically, it's still late for me."

"I'm going to start thinking you're geth if you don't start sleeping like a normal person."

"Wouldn't that be hilarious?" she snorted, her official attitude forgotten. "Commander Shepard, slayer of geth, made of geth."

"Sounds like the plot for some bad vid," he agreed, turning back to the console.

They watched a colony pass beyond the window in companionable silence, and she thought it was nice that that she could stand in the same room as someone without any overt expectation. Joker had no patience for protocol, and as a person propped up by innumerable layers of it for nearly all her adult life, the change was a breath of fresh air.

"I heard what happened down there," Joker said finally, in what she imagined he thought to be a casual tone.

"Yeah? And what was that?"

"That Thorian thing, crawling in everyone's heads," he explained, gesturing tightly with his left hand. "How it got Alenko and Williams, but not you."

And just like that, her peaceful reverie was shattered. She felt herself subtly stacking upward by the spine just like she'd seen her mother do when taken off guard, as if to present the carapace of her perfect posture to anything that attempted to unsettle her. "Yeah, things got rough," she said evasively.

"I wonder why that thing didn't mess with you," Joker said, more as a personal aside than a question, his fingers skittering over his console.

Shepard shrugged. "Hadn't really thought about it." The truth was that she had, but since she hadn't arrived at any definitive answers, she decided to try and put it from her thoughts for now.

"Wonder if it had to do with the beacon stuff," Joker mused. "Maybe you were immune."

"Maybe," Shepard allowed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Or maybe it looked at the other two and thought it'd be easier for them to subdue me than the other way around."

"Huh," Joker said. "I'd say it underestimated all of you, then."

Shepard hadn't thought of it that way, and as inclined as she was toward thinking she was a terrible soldier and an even worse Commander, it was illogical and stupid to deny that she had some skill that the Thorian might not have counted on. Likewise for Kaidan and Ashley, who had resisted in their own ways.

Shepard cleared her throat. "Carry on, Flight Lieutenant."

"Aye, ma'am."

With a huff of breath, Shepard stepped out of the cockpit and resumed her shiftless wandering through the Normandy. She detected a slight change in the pitch of the engines, and – was that a catch? It was a good thing they were going back for provisioning; it would be a fine first cruise for this prototype frigate if its engine blew out now, with so much at stake.

She thought of Eden Prime, as she did most nights. There was a distinct stench to a burned, bullet-ridden corpse that they didn't properly prepare you for in basic. It put her off the taste of grilled meat, because one whiff of that and she was right there back in the trenches of Elysium or Eden Prime, biting her cheek so hard that she tasted blood, desperately praying to some random impotent deity that she wouldn't puke everywhere.

She thought of Saren, her implacable foe. She thought of his purpose, the geth at his heel, a powerful Matriarch at his hand. She thought of his voice as he called down to her in the Council chambers – derisive, smug almost – and how she had  _burned_ with impotent fury, and clenched her hands into shaking fists at her sides, for want of a better outlet. She still had the stink of Eden Prime's dead in her nose, and he dared to tell her it was a put up job, just the wailings of humans, those troublesome children, looking to start another war.

Not for the first time, she wished Hannah Shepard was not dead – though her mother didn't even have the privilege of being properly dead, for instead she'd been reduced to particles floating in the endless void. But Shepard wished that her mother wasn't badly dead or properly dead, but alive and well, just a vid call away. Because she would have known immediately what to do about Saren and the geth, and doubtless she'd pull it all off with more style than Sam Shepard could ever manage, even on her best days.

Beyond that, she'd know what the hell to do about Kaidan, and the suspicion that the longer she went without addressing their growing regard for one another, the more difficult it would be when the inevitable break came.

Shepard made her way to her cabin, but not before checking around the corner to see if Kaidan was still hunched around his console. She was fully aware that she was acting stupid and childish, but at the moment she did not have the energy to awkwardly wave and smile and say something dorky in order to facilitate her escape.

She wasn't sure if it was relief or dismay that filled her heart when she saw that his station was empty.

She trudged into her cabin and hit the door switch, stumbling a little as it whooshed shut behind her and upset her balance. Maybe she was finally tired enough to catch a few hours of sleep. She flopped down on her bed hopefully, draping her arm over her eyes, but as the minutes stretched on she realized it was a vain hope. With a sigh, she sat upright and pushed herself to her console, firing it up without really paying attention.

Maybe she could get some work done. Maybe she could stare at the flicker at the top right corner of the screen and forget that she had a brain in her skull that would not shut up long enough for her to catch a few hours of much needed rest. But as she considered her options, the disquieted loneliness won out, and she dialed in a very familiar set of numbers, pinching the skin at her wrist as she waited.

"Admiral," she said when the screen flickered to life.

" _Commander,"_  said Admiral Hackett, rubbing his eyes before craning closer to the screen.  _"Business or personal?"_

It was their ritual, comfortable as an old pair of shoes. Shepard had never been able to figure out his relationship to her mother – sometimes they weren't really friends, sometimes they were more, always they confused her – but she had always been able to count on the fact that he was a constant fixture in her life. When she was young, he insisted he call her by his first name. Now that they were military, if she called at odd hours, he would ask first, and thus they would either continue the conversation as superior and subordinate, or two old friends.

She cleared her throat awkwardly, suddenly overcome with guilt. He'd obviously been about to go to sleep, or even worse, she'd woken him up in the middle of the night for some stupid shit that she should have been able to figure out herself. "Uh – business," she said after a minute. "I was – I was wondering if you'd gotten my report."

Predictably, he was not fooled.  _"You look a little upset for business,"_  he said gently.

"Yeah, well … you looked tired. And I didn't want to have woken you up for a personal call."

" _I wasn't sleeping, either,"_  he assured her.  _"What's on your mind?"_

She reached for the first thing she thought of. "Worrying about Saren, worrying about the mission. The usual bag of panic, I guess."

" _You know you'll be okay, right?"_

"Because it's not that big of a deal?"

" _Because you can handle it."_

"Ah. Right."

" _I remember when you did this all the time,"_  Hackett said, and she might have accused him of sounding fond if it didn't soothe her so much.  _"Newly promoted, scared out of your wits."_

"Could you blame me?"

" _Are you kidding? We all were, and anyone who tells you different has never had to shoulder the burden of command. You want to talk about a disaster, let's talk about my first year as an Admiral."_

"I know the story," she smirked. "I'd say you were lucky."

" _I was damn lucky they didn't strip my rank and boot my ass back to private."_

She snorted. "I don't know that I'd go that far."

" _You weren't there. You did not see Admiral Jackson's face, God rest the poor bastard. I was pretty lucky they didn't kick me out altogether, now that I think about it."_

"Boy, then we'd be in a real mess, wouldn't we?"

" _I don't know about that,"_  Hackett said, shrugging a little.  _"My point is, anyone who thinks this is all easy heroism doesn't know the half of it. But I know you, and I know you always get the job done. I have no reason to think that won't be the case here."_

"Past precedent doesn't mean anything when faced with fresh circumstances," she argued quietly.

" _You don't really believe that,"_  he told her.  _"You're being contrary because you're anxious and upset."_

"Maybe," she hedged. "You're right. I'm sorry."

" _Nothing to be sorry about, not as long as you're doing your job still. And from what I can see by your reports, you're doing a fine job."_

"Yeah, well … I was always pretty good at talking myself up. It could be a disaster for all you know."

" _Actually, I'd say you're pretty good at underestimating yourself,"_  Hackett countered neutrally.  _"I'm just saying that we've all been in a place like where you are. Maybe not with the Spectre business, but anyone who took up a command knows what this is like. You're not alone."_

And maybe it was that the words were coming from Hackett, but for the first time in a long time, she felt the weight that had settled itself around her shoulders lift somewhat. Maybe she wasn't alone, not really. It had been childish to think that she was. "You're right," she said finally, smiling a little. "Thanks."

" _You're welcome,"_  he said, and he mirrored her smile, though his was tinged with the fondness of remembrance.  _"I don't suppose your mother ever told you this, but she didn't step up to the title of Captain without a few hitches."_

"Aw. They can't have been that bad."

" _You sure?"_  Hackett grinned.  _"There was one mission, just on the border of Alliance space. They'd been called in to evacuate a colony with some personnel of mild strategic importance before a hurricane hit– can't exactly remember which one. She got there just as the thing was about to blow, and half the targets had bunkered down in their shelters by then. So she had to maneuver this big old thing in a big damn storm, trying to round up everyone. Blew out communications, sub-FTL, fried the eezo core; it was a real disaster. But you know what?"_

"What?"

" _She got the job done. And next time, she didn't let circumstances catch her with her ass hanging out. She was good that way, and so are you."_

Shepard wasn't about to deny this, though to hear it embarrassed her slightly. She'd always thought she had to really work to live up to her mother's reputation. "Huh. She'd never told me about that one."

" _I'm not surprised. She always got pretty mad when I brought it up."_

"Why would you? Were you looking for a fight?"

He cleared his throat.  _"Ah – no. Not like that."_

"Right." Shepard fell silent, picking at a loose thread in her fatigues. "I was thinking about her today," she said finally.

" _So was I, actually."_

Perhaps it was the aching loneliness that had seemed to hollow her out the longer she had kept it secret, but at that moment she could no longer keep it to herself, for the burden of the truth had grown too great to bear. "Is there anything that you regret?" she blurted before she could stop herself, mortified that she'd essentially asked her commanding officer a deeply personal and searching question.

But he'd promised her this was personal, and they hung their ranks on the door during these discussions. He looked away, and at that moment she was struck by his age and experience, more than she'd ever know herself.  _"Sure, I've got things I regret. Probably more than most."_

"What are you supposed to do with them?" she asked him quietly. "Everything stupid I did, everything hurtful I said, every failure … I think that you're supposed to be able to put it on a shelf and move on, but I don't know how."

" _I don't either,"_  he admitted.  _"Best I've been able to manage, I try not to screw up in the same way again."_

And it was simple, but ultimately he'd landed on exactly what she had needed to hear most. She marveled at his ability for this, one that he'd shared with her mother, so that the memory of the two of them side by side, understanding her nonsense in concert was one of her most treasured possessions. "That makes a lot of sense," she said.

" _I'm glad."_  He was too quiet for a moment, and she got the impression that he weighed the sentiment that balanced on his tongue against prudence and propriety, measuring it for its worth. But in the end, comfort won out _. "She'd be proud of you, you know."_

Shepard couldn't speak at first, for her throat had become too tight, and she felt her eyes burn with something that was akin to grief or shame. How easily did they resurface! "Right." She cleared her throat loudly. "I think we're coming up on the Citadel soon," she lied. "Need to get things squared away for provisioning."

" _All right, Commander."_  As usual in these conversations, he followed her lead.

"Keep me posted if anything comes up," she said.

" _Will do. Be careful out there."_

She saluted and switched off the console, rubbing her eyes quickly with the back of her hand, swallowing the hard lump that had formed in her throat.

As with most feelings regarding her mother, she pushed the grief aside, if only to remain functional at the moment. But as she sat in the increasing silence, watching the light on her desk shudder slightly in time with the thrumming of the engine beneath her feet, she considered Hackett's final advice as she never had before, desperate as she was to achieve some kind of resolution. His words had been especially resonant in a way that she did not understand at first – don't add to your regret.

The thought of Kaidan resurfaced as it usually did in these silent spaces, when she was left alone with her unruly thoughts and desires. She thought of his smile, his guilt, the sense of honor that governed his heart. She thought of his skill – those steady hands on his gun, or curled as they were over a biotic pulse that raised the hair on her arms. She thought of what it was like to make him laugh, to give into the desire to speak without barriers.

She had considered pushing him away for the sake of her career, but in light of the Admirals' warning, a sudden, thrilling resolution nearly knocked the breath out of her. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that to lose him would only add to her regret.

And in that manner, she decided.


	18. Chapter 18

Shepard expected trouble to find them on their route to the Citadel less because their destination was some lawless bastion in uncharted space (the opposite was true in fact) but because she had been conditioned to expect the worst at all times. It's when a situation appears safe when you have to worry the most. Elysium had been the very epitome of picturesque safety, and Martinez had joked that pigs would grow jet engines and break the sound barrier before anything bad happened there. Forty-eight hours later, she watched a bullet catch him just above his brow, and that had been the end of that. She had learned: as a soldier, if you didn't expect the worst, you were asking for the worst.

But the journey was uneventful, and when the Normandy docked, Shepard let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. From there, it was a blessed relief to coordinate the provisioning efforts and oversee the repairs. For the last interminable span of hours, Shepard had wandered her ship listlessly for want for something to do; now, she had her hands full, and she couldn't be happier.

It was in busy places where her whirling thoughts quieted, and she was able to focus on the directive at hand. There was a kind of peace in that.

So she should have known that the provisioning and repairs would not take nearly as long as she wanted. Eight hours later, she was left with a fully functional ship that boasted a complete compliment of supplies. The transaction reports might consume her for another paltry chunk of time, but in the end, she was looking at a good twenty-four hours of waiting for the assigned departure date.

She supposed she could recall the crew early and resume their mission, but she'd been a commander long enough to know that morale would take a hit. Her crew had been working hard, and they deserved to have an uninterrupted break, regardless of how anxious it made their Commander. A happy crew is an effective crew, and other colloquialisms to that effect.

Shepard had resigned herself to haunting the Normandy and attempting to get some invented work done when she heard a knock at her door. Not the polite, self-conscious sound she expected, but a frenetic series of raps that indicated impatience or excitement. Frowning, Shepard tossed the datapad she'd been poring over onto her desk and opened the door. She wasn't sure what she expected, but it definitely had not been Ashley, looking as if she couldn't bear to stand still for a moment longer.

"Evening, Commander," she said with a hasty salute before falling at ease without being asked.

"Chief," said Shepard, arching a brow. "Can I help you?"

"Just wondering what you were going to do while we've got a bit of free time," Ashley said innocently, folding her hands behind her back and craning forward.

Shepard shrugged. "Probably finish the transaction reports, settle some Spectre business. Try and get a few hours of shut eye. You know."

"Yeah, I thought you'd say that," she said. "Come on."

"What?"

"You're not going to hide in your cabin for a day, making up work so you don't have to think about how stressed you are."

Shepard crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not, huh?"

"No, ma'am. You're going to follow your good friend Ashley, and you're going to let her get you all dolled up, and then you're going to let her drag you to a club for some drinks and dancing and just plain fun." Ashley grinned. "And you're going to do it without any lip."

"That doesn't sound at all like me."

"Come on, Shepard. You remember what fun is, don't you?"

Shepard scowled. "I know how to have fun. Maybe my idea of it is doing reports and catching up on work and –"

"God, you sound just like LT. I had to practically shove him out the airlock. He's lucky he hit the dock."

"He's okay, right?"

"Oh, he's fine. He had a few choice words for me, though," Ashley said, grinning. "He had some misguided delusions about working too, and let me just assure you that that's been all cleared up. So if he can get his cute butt off the ship and to the club, you can too."

Shepard would have rather thrown herself into the sun than admit this, but today was a day for appalling honesty, it seemed. "I don't – I don't have anything to wear. Appropriate for a club, I mean."

"You can wear something of mine, then," Ashley said, untroubled.

"And . . . well, I don't have any makeup either," Shepard muttered. "I didn't think I'd be doing anything like this."

"You know how to put it on, right?" Ashley said.

Curse her unfailing insight. Shepard shook her head, utterly miserable.

"You're kidding."

"I never had much use for it. There's such a thing as a lost cause, you know."

"I hope you're not talking about your face, because if you are, I might have to rearrange your features with my fist."

"It would probably be an improvement."

"All right – that's it. Cram that kind of talk and come with me, okay? At this point, it would be criminal to leave you alone in your cabin, stewing away with these misconceptions and delusions."

"But –"

"You need a night out. Allow me to be your guide," Ashley said, grinning charmingly and sweeping her arms about in a grand manner. "I promise you might even have fun."

Shepard might have argued in any other circumstance, but there was something so earnest about Ashley at that moment that she knew any protest would be ultimately futile. And – if she was being honest with herself – she realized that this would probably provide exactly the distraction she needed. So with a great show of grudging capitulation, Shepard heaved her shoulders in a martyred sigh and threw up her hands. "All right. If you insist."

"I do."

Ashley made a quick detour to her quarters, rummaging through her belongings until she produced two dresses – one in a deep wine red, the other black – along with a bag of what Shepard assumed to be makeup. "What size are you?" Ashley called, muffled from under the bunk, where she'd stored most of her things.

"Uh – shoe size?"

"Yeah."

Shepard would have preferred to let this remain a mystery, but in the interest of bonding, she came clean. "Size ten," she muttered.

Ashley poked her head out from under the bunk. "Are you kidding?"

Shepard held up one foot as if to demonstrate. "Sadly, no."

"Jesus. I'm pretty sure I'm taller than you, and you have bigger feet than me."

"Yes, yes, rub it in," Shepard bit out. "You start to see why I avoid these rituals."

"Oh, whine about it, why don't you. Like having big feet got in anyone else's way before." Ashley pushed herself out from under her bunk, two strappy pairs of shoes in her arms. She brandished one pair under Shepard's nose. "These are my sister's, and she had big feet like you."

The concept of having a sister, from whom she could steal clothes, was an altogether foreign concept. "What the hell are they doing in your bag?"

"I thought they were cute and decided I'd take them off her hands," Ashley grinned. "She probably doesn't even know they're gone. She's got at least forty pairs of shoes like these."

Shepard owned maybe four pairs of shoes in total. "Right."

Ashley herded her into the communal bathroom, dumping her bag on the counter and sifting through the contents, lining up pots of power and crème to her right before pushing away the rejects to her left. She'd been in the room for less than a minute and already it looked like a woman's magazine had burst, flinging its contents every which way, creating a veritable haven of femininity. Shepard wouldn't dare admit it, but she was overwhelmed.

Of course, Ashley noticed. She broke into a grin when she caught sight of Shepard's expression. "You look a little ill, Skip."

"Do you use all this stuff?" Shepard asked, agog.

"Not when we're on the field. It gets runny, makes a mess – you end up looking worse than if you'd just gone without."

Shepard processed this. "And … you like doing all this?"

"Yeah, I do, and why shouldn't I? Just because I can shoot you ten ways to Sunday shouldn't mean I can't enjoy getting dolled up too," Ashley said, her tone suddenly sharp.

"I wasn't saying you can't."

Ashley sighed. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Here," she said, passing the dark red dress into Shepard's outstretched hands. "Put that on and tell me how it works."

"I –"

"It'll probably be a bit big on you," said Ashley as she sorted through her endless cache of makeup. "But I'll make it work."

'A bit big' ended up being an understatement. The dress – though well cut, fitted at the hips, with a plunging neckline – hung off her body like a circus tent. Shepard trudged out of the stall and closed the door behind her, struggling not to show how weirdly betrayed she felt by her own body, which seemed to conspire with her anxiety to make this entire excursion impossible. "Ta da," she said weakly.

But to her everlasting credit, Ashley didn't laugh at how ridiculous her Commander looked. She only beckoned to Shepard with a grin, spinning her around gently and pinning the dress at the back, so that it no longer hung off her body but clung to her skin in all the right places, until it looked almost as if it had been made for her alone. "You're pretty slim, Skip."

"I'm a scarecrow," Shepard said. "No need to mince words."

"You are not," Ashley said, rolling her eyes. "Have to say, though; I'm glad this thing fits you up top. Don't know how much I could have done for you there."

Shepard glanced cursorily at her chest, which might be called ample if you'd never seen another pair of breasts before. "I'll take your word for it."

With the dress situation resolved, Ashley went to war on Shepard's face; dusting her cheeks with fine powder, dabbing shadow on her lids, sweeping her lashes with mascara. Shepard watched with mingled envy and tenderness, for she'd nearly reached the advanced age of thirty without ever figuring any of this stuff out for herself, yet Ashley made her up as if she'd done so all her life. "You're good at this," Shepard said quietly.

"Eh. I've just done this a lot," Ashley equivocated. "It's part of the territory when you have sisters."

"I'd imagine."

Ashley looked at her, and for a moment her eyes hooded with empathetic concern, which Shepard could not handle at the best of times, let alone this bare moment, stripped of her usual defenses – her uniform, her rank. "You didn't do stuff like this with your mom?"

Shepard struggled for an answer that would do her mother justice, for Ashley was looking at her with something quickly approaching pity, and there was no need for that. "Mom wasn't really into this stuff," Shepard said, shrugging. "She didn't need it, you know? She looked like this without all the effort."

"Hm," Ashley hummed as she swept something glossy over Shepard's lips. "You don't really need it, either. Still, it's kind of fun, don't you think?"

Before, she would have resumed her campaign of passive resistance, but the odd fact was that this was the first time anyone had shown her any kind of feminine camaraderie in her life, and what was even more surprising, she liked it. When she was young, her mother hadn't had much use for this kind of ritual, so they'd avoided it. While in the Ascension project, she hadn't really had any friends, and instead (or maybe because) she'd decided to work harder than the rest. To say nothing of her years in the military, where she preferred to be brusque and businesslike because she figured out early she was more likely to be respected if she did her best to emulate her duty-driven mother. So it was odd, at this juncture of her life, to realize that maybe she'd been missing out, and that this wasn't so bad. "Maybe you're right," she said at last.

"You'll eventually realize that I'm right about everything."

"So humble too."

Ashley ignored this. "There," she said with a flourish, spinning Shepard around so that they faced the mirror. "Look at how gorgeous you look."

Shepard gaped, and a stranger in the mirror gaped back. She had grown so accustomed to her strange features being bare and unadorned that any variation on this familiar theme rendered her speechless, and she struggled in vain for something to say. Her lashes were long and dark, curling impossibly, and a hint of color rose in her normally pallid cheeks, as if she had just run an impossible distance with one hundred fifty pounds of armor and ordinance strapped to her back. Unlike a model, with their soft curves and angles, Shepard's arms and shoulders were muscled and lean -as befit a serviceman, naturally – but somehow the dress emphasized this in an attractive way.

She looked like a normal woman about to go on a date. She looked nothing like herself, in other words.

"I look like a clown," Shepard managed.

Ashley sighed the sigh of a martyr, grabbing the black dress from over the stall door and disappearing within. "Shepard? I say this with all the love and respect possible. Shut the hell up."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Seriously," Ashley said, tossing her fatigues up and over the door, where they landed with a muffled thump on the tiled floor. "I feel bad for myself, having to go out there and stand next to you with you looking like that."

"You're just saying that."

"Boy, you really don't know how to take a compliment, do you?"

Shepard was about to respond when Ashley strode from the stall, and the reply died in the back of her throat. It wasn't jealousy to note that Ashley was heartbreakingly gorgeous, with a figure that Shepard was not shy in admitting that she coveted. How many times had she pinched at the tight skin of her hips, wishing in vain for curves to grow? Ashley was that wish incarnate – like an old pinup, tough and feminine all in one. Shepard had only ever managed the tough part.

"You all right?" Ashley asked.

"How you can talk like I'm some great beauty when you look like that is completely beyond me," she said, grinning.

Ashley did a little spin. "So I take it I have your approval?"

"That's an understatement. You look like I always wished I could look like."

Ashley pulled out the bun and shook out her hair, leaving it mused around her face in attractive waves, so that she looked wild and sexy and a little fierce. "I'm sure you won't believe me, but when I was a teenager, I absolutely hated this," she said, gesturing to her gorgeous figure. "I was surrounded by super slim women like you, and I felt like an Amazon. My friends would all swap clothes, and here's me with the giant ass, hiding in my sweatshirt and cargos. I was a sad picture."

"Aw, I bet you looked as great then as you do now."

"You're probably right. I figured out there are a lot of different ways to be beautiful, and this one works for me," she said, swiping a fierce red stain over her lips before tossing the little tube back into her bag. "The way you look works for you. No use in tearing yourself down, wanting what you can't have, you know? Besides," she said with a mischievous grin. "I know there's a certain LT who is probably going to have a heart attack when he sees you."

Something in Shepard's gut turned over weakly. "'When'?"

"Oh, right. I might have told him to be at Flux tonight." Ashley shrugged. "Must have slipped my mind."

"He can't see me like this," Shepard squeaked, horrified. "He'll—"

"He'll think he's died and gone to heaven," Ashley cut in smoothly. "Come on. Where's that brave Commander I love so much?"

"She ditches me when the armor comes off," Shepard said. She'd meant for it to be a joke, but the moment the words left her mouth, they became heavy with meaning that she did not intend. For her part, Ashley did not harp on it – instead, she steered Shepard smoothly from the bathroom and through the ship, magnanimous in her victory. Shepard was thankful that the ship was mostly empty at the moment, as most of the crew had taken off, the better to enjoy their brief leave.

Her hopes of going unnoticed more or less died the moment they reached the CIC. Pressley gaped at the pair of them as they passed, and Joker actually spat out a mouthful of coffee he'd been nursing, splattering his console in a highly comical fashion.

"Where the hell are you two going, the Red Light?" he managed.

"Is that any way to speak to your commanding officer?" Shepard snapped.

"Jesus, Commander, sorry. I didn't recognize you."

Ashley snorted. "Carry on, Joker. Maybe Shepard won't keel-haul you later."

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, turning back to his console and wiping it as clean as he could.

They'd taken their first step off the Normandy when Ashley lost the battle against her laughter, and the sound of it echoed through the dock like the sound of bells. "I've never actually seen someone do a spit-take in my life," she wheezed, clutching her chest.

"Bet you anything he was looking at you," Shepard smirked.

"Ha! That guy would marry the ship if he could."

Since this wasn't their first time on the Citadel, they made their way through the wards with slightly more confidence. Shepard knew their destination was the Flux, a fairly popular club that boasted a fine selection of drinks – both levo and dextro – and an even better selection of music. Not that that was any interest to Shepard; even on her best days, she was an abysmal dancer. It likely had to do with the fact that her feet were too big for her body, or maybe she'd been trained since an early age to move with the intent to mess things up, not to entice. As she chanced a glance at her stunning friend, though, she got the feeling that Ashley did not share these issues.

In only a matter of minutes, she was proven right. Shepard had no sooner staked a claim at the bar and ordered a beer when Ashley took to the floor, moving with such sensuous grace that Shepard could not take her eyes away. She'd seen this woman smash a geth in the face with the butt of her rifle using so much force that she'd left only a jumbled mess of broken parts, the light of its broken eye blinking weakly before fading out. She could hit a target between the eyes from unnatural distances. She was tough and smart, principled and loyal, and yet here she was, shimmying without any of the requisite awkwardness.

So maybe the requisite awkwardness was just a defect of Shepard's. It was clear other servicemen didn't have this problem.

Ashley made her way back to Shepard's side after waving goodbye to a pair of strangers that she'd been dancing with, threading through the undulating crowd toward Shepard's safe place at the bar. She took note of Shepard's white knuckles on the beer bottle, and tightness of her jaw. "You want to dance?"

"Probably not a good idea," said Shepard, nodding at her feet, which were currently encased in Ashley's sister's strappy shoes. "I'm having trouble walking in these. Dancing will probably not be much better."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, this is fine," said Shepard. "I like watching, you know?"

"That makes sense," Ashley said, signaling for the bartender to pass her a beer, catching it deftly when he slung it down the counter. "I get the feeling you don't do stuff like this often."

"You'd be right."

"Not even when you were younger?"

"I . . . didn't really have people to go out dancing with," Shepard admitted. "Grew up alone, homeschooled on my mom's ship, you know. Didn't really have friends in Ascension or basic." She was quiet for a moment. "There were a few guys I was close with, but . . . well, then Elysium happened."

"Jesus, really?" Ashley was suddenly somber, and altogether at odds with the ebullient setting. "I had no idea."

"It's not a big deal. Just . . . I don't know. I kind of got used to being alone. So this is . . . interesting."

"I can't even imagine what that's like," Ashley said, taking an ambitious swig. "My family is huge. I have relatives coming out of my ears. It was a good day when I didn't have one of my sisters digging through my stuff, looking for something to wear or play with or what have you. And I mean, you grow up in the middle of a bunch of people, and you start thinking wistfully about being left the fuck alone. So I don't know if I can say that I know what that's like, but I sympathize, you know?"

There were days when young Shepard had wished so desperately for a large family that it manifested as a physical ache in her gut. She had dreamed of brothers and sisters, and a father most of all who would pick her up and sling her over his shoulders, so that she could sit a head above the crowd and see it unfurl before her like an endless sea.

Before, Ashley's sympathy might have irritated her, but at the moment it was profound. "Thanks," Shepard finally managed. "I mean, for everything. This is kind of a departure for me."

"Well, now I feel like a heel for not having done this sooner."

"Aw, don't. Seriously, this is fine. This is . . . this is nice." Shepard smiled. "Really, thank you."

"I should be thanking you," Ashley said. "All those times you pulled my ass out of the fire."

"And all the times to come,"

"You bet. Seriously, though. It kind of sucked, the way you came into my life, but I'm glad for it. And the way I see it, it's a good thing to let people know that kind of stuff. So … I'm glad for you." Ashley's grin widened. "I don't let just anyone wear my clothes, you know."

"I can see why," Shepard said, twisting one of the straps of the dress between her fingers. "This is probably the nicest thing I've ever worn."

"You be careful, now," Ashley warned, batting her hand away. "I've got three dozen clips and pins keeping you in that dress, and if you mess around with it too much, they might come out."

"Another thing to stress about."

"I'm starting to think you're only happy when you're stressing out about something."

"I might be offended if I didn't think you might be right."

Ashley had been about to reply when she paused, looking at a point just over Shepard's shoulder, to what she assumed was the entrance. "Oh my god."

"What?"

"No, don't turn around yet."

"What the hell?"

Ashley shushed her. "Guess who just walked in?"

Shepard's heart leapt into her throat, where she feared it would stay. "I guess it was too much to hope for that Kaidan might miss seeing me like this."

"Are you kidding me? He saw you can he still can't move. Now, do as I say and turn very slowly. Chin down, eyes up. See, it's cute – it's coy."

Shepard threw caution to the wind and did as she was told, for none of this would have naturally occurred to her otherwise. She met Kaidan's gaze from across the room, and for one strange moment, the music and the light and the hundreds of people talking and laughing faded away, until she was left alone in her red dress, caught like a butterfly in his stare.

"Look at him," Ashley said in her ear. "He can't breathe."

She couldn't breathe either. He was too handsome, with the added benefit of being dressed down in civilian clothes, so that he almost seemed to be a handsome stranger, and not an amazing man that she had come to need over the last weeks.

"You two," Ashley muttered before pulling away and waving enthusiastically to Kaidan. "Over here!" she shouted. "Come have a drink!"

Kaidan weaved through the crowd, studiously averting her gaze until he stood a respectful distance away, and she noticed he kept his eyes locked on the space just above her eyes, as if he feared that his gaze might wander. She found that she feared something similar, for if she wasn't careful, her eyes would drift downward and drink the sight of him in. And to do so would be to invite speculation what those muscles would feel like under her hands.

"Was wondering when you'd show up," Ashley grinned, throwing a smug elbow into Kaidan's ribs. "Enjoying the sights?"

Kaidan cleared his throat. "It's an interesting place," he managed.

"Right, right. Well, if you two would excuse me, I have a date with that highly attractive man trying to dance over there. Have a fine evening."

Before she could leave, however, Shepard lunged forward and clutched her arm desperately. "You can't leave me like this!" she hissed in her ear.

"You started out a duckling and now you're a swan. Fly, my swan, fly!" Ashley replied, gently prying Shepard's desperate fingers off her arm and offering her a jaunty wave before she disappeared into the writhing crowd.

Shepard could stare down a horde of geth armed to the teeth without breaking a sweat, but faced with engaging Kaidan in conversation in a dress that was far closer to nakedness than she was comfortable with filled her with terror that went beyond words. But she swallowed her fear and offered him a smile, one that he tentatively returned.

"You look nice," he offered.

"Ah – thank you," she said, smoothing the dress over her stomach. "It's Ashley's. I've been informed there are three dozen pins and clips keeping it on me," she blurted before she could stop herself. "I don't know why I told you that."

"You can't tell the difference," he said, though she wondered how he could even tell, as he was still attempting to avoid looking at her below the neck.

"Yeah, Ashley's better at this whole thing that I expected. But maybe I trip, and there'll be a brief explosion of pins and clips, and then the jig will be up." She laughed nervously.

Kaidan did not seem to know what to say to this, so the two of them fell into awkward silence once again. But she considered him as they watched the goings-on of the club – the thumping music reverberating in her ears, the endless crowd dancing as if they had no other care in the world. She ignored the rest and focused on him – the strong angle of his jaw, his straight nose, his steady eyes, currently tight with something she did not immediately recognize. Pain, maybe? He was probably getting a migraine from all the flashing light and sound.

She thought of their conversation from the day before, and how close they had come then. She thought of Hackett and his warning – to do the best you could not to add to your regret. She thought of the realization that had struck her as violently as an explosion, with all the damage you'd expect; she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would regret the loss of him, far more than she'd regret making her desire known.

"Want to get out of here?" she asked him, leaning close so that she could have kissed his ear if she had a mind to.

For a moment, she feared he would say no. They've been slung in that awkward place, halfway between want and denial, where they knew exactly what the other one wanted and needed, both angling for a graceful position around the nearly physical presence the regs posed in their lives. But -finally, amazingly - he nodded, and she felt like for the first time in many years, she could breathe.

As they stepped over the threshold, his hand brushed her elbow.

 


	19. Chapter 19

"Where are we going?" Kaidan managed, pushing through the crowd to catch up.

"Well, I figure we don't want to go anywhere that will set off your migraines, right?"

He couldn't put into words how much her concern warmed him. "Ah – if there's somewhere you'd like to go—"

"I'm not a big fan of bright, noisy places either. So I was thinking we go somewhere not-bright and not-noisy. Have any preference?"

He still couldn't believe that the night had taken this shape – Shepard beside him, looking so beautiful it made his chest hurt – so he was unable and unwilling to be picky. "No, not really," he shrugged. "This is nice."

"Promenading?" She slipped her hands into the crook of his elbow and fell into step beside him. He knew it was an innocent touch, but it still sent his pulse crashing in his ears. He felt the callouses on her hands from years of shooting, the rough fabric of her gauntlets rubbing against the base of her fingers. "You're old fashioned, aren't you?"

"You caught me."

She smiled, then, and it was horribly cliché to compare the brightness of her smile to the sun, but he would be the first to admit he was no poet, and cliché comparisons were often all he had at his disposal. "You're lucky I'm the same," she said, her fingers tightening slightly on his arm, and an odd thrill ran through him.

"I am," he agreed, much more fervently than he'd intended.

She guided them to a small club on the quieter periphery of the Wards, with subdued lighting and strains of seductive music he didn't recognize lilting on the smoke tinged air. There were small tables arranged artfully on the floor, populated by winsome patrons who carried conversations in low voices and alternately listened to the music with half-lidded eyes, nursing their drinks and nodding their heads to the beat. It was nothing like Flux, where he could hardly hear his own voice, or even his own heartbeat above the insane pulsing of the beat; here the music was a charming suggestion that seduced the listener with clever, gentle fingers, altogether sure of its ability to transport.

Shepard indicated an empty table in the far corner with a nod of her head, and they took a seat across from each other. How small these tables where, he marveled; if he had a mind to, he could reach out and brush the soft curve of her cheek. Not that he would – he was not nearly so addled to breach that barrier, even in this enchanted place, where she took the shape of a beautiful woman instead of the Commander he tried so desperately not to want – but the fact that the opportunity existed at all made it just as intoxicating as her smile.

"Who do I have to blame for your wonderfully antiquated sensibilities?" she asked after they ordered drinks, and her grin took a cheeky edge.

"My parents, naturally. Who else?"

"Maybe you had an inspirational teacher or something. Or an old movie star you idolized."

He couldn't bite back the derisive noise in the back of his throat. "My teachers were not really the inspirational kind."

"Ooh, really? Are we finally going to talk about BAaT? Will I finally learn all your secrets, and render you a far less mysterious figure than you are currently?" she said, leaning forward, but something in his expression seemed to give her pause, for she froze momentarily, studying him. "Though judging by your face, it's not really something you'd want to talk about."

"Not tonight, at least," he said, too relieved to be terrified that she'd gained the ability to read his mind. "But sometime soon."

"I'll hold you to that, Alenko. No funny business."

"No funny business."

She smiled, took a small sip of her whiskey. "So tell me about your parents, then. Since we're going to do this like normal people."

"Do what?"

"This," she said, gesturing around to the room at large. "No uniforms, no salutes, no ranks; just two people, having a drink."

 _Is that all?_ he wondered, but he kept this traitorous thought to himself. "You saying I'm not a normal person?"

She laughed, not unkindly. "You are the furthest thing from normal possible. Well, maybe not the furthest thing, but you're pretty strange and you know it."

"Strange, huh."

"Not in a bad way!" she quickly clarified, sloshing a bit of whiskey over the side of her glass in her haste to be understood. "In a good way."

"How is that even possible?"

"Well, you tell me. Would you rather be average and boring? Or as interesting as you know you are? I prefer the latter, honestly, and I don't even know you that well. Speaking of which, I was asking about your parents before you derailed me."

"Me?" he gasped, holding one hand to his chest in mock indignation. "You're pretty good at derailing yourself."

She waved that away. "I won't dignify that with an answer. Out with it."

"My parents, huh," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Mom was a concert pianist. Dad a serviceman."

"I imagine he was pretty proud when you joined up."

"Yeah, I guess he was," Kaidan said, watching the musicians as they segued smoothly into the next number. "Don't think he was too pleased with the biotics, though. He didn't really understand them."

"You get that a lot with older servicemen, though," Shepard commiserated. "They served differently than we do, and I always thought their time in the service taught them to distrust something they didn't explicitly understand."

"You know how it is, then," he said, smiling a little. "Was your mom -?"

"Oh, she was fine with it. Actually, I think the fact that I was a biotic pleased her. Though she was inclined to see them as a tool, and she never turned her nose up at something that could be useful, you know? Too many years as a Captain."

"Probably why you ended up a biotic yourself. All that exposure to eezo."

"Yeah, I think you're right." She took another sip, studying him over the rim over her glass, and even in this low light he was entranced by the exact shade of her eyes – a deep blue that often reminded him of staring into the clear depths of English Bay. "Bet your dad is pleased too."

"How do you figure?"

"Look at you. Big hero, fighting the geth, on your way to stop Saren. You've come out on the right end of things despite your situation. You conquered the issues attached to your implant through sheer amazingness. I'd be proud of you. I mean, I am—in a non-weird way." She broke off, coloring a bit.

"My situation, huh?" he prompted, leaning closer.

"You know."

"Sure, but I didn't think you did."

She shrugged awkwardly. "It was a guess – a good one too, by your reaction."

"Hah. Aren't you smart."

"I like to think so," she said, and he thought her smile might knock the breath right out of him. He busied himself with his drink in order to compose himself, because she might be dressed like a woman instead of a Commander – clad in red, all soft curves and strong angles – but he knew her true state, and her true function in his life. Perhaps there was a small part of him that recognized this edge he balanced on, the thrilling inertia of tipping over that precarious point, and being wholly unable to right himself, regardless of how desperately he fought. What an edge this was, for as he looked at her he realized he no longer possessed the desire even to pretend to fight the way he felt. He let it wash over him as she smiled in that moment, and what was once a possibility took the dreadful, fantastic shape of inevitability.

He cleared his throat. "So. I told you about my parents. Your turn."

"So that's the rule, then?"

"It's only fair."

"Hah. I wish I could be one of those cool, mysterious women who say things like 'I despise fairness,' but unfortunately I am horribly boring and a great fan of fair play."

"I wouldn't say that's unfortunate."

"Maybe not for you," she grinned. "Let's see; my parents. Mom was a Captain. Never met my dad. There's the short version."

"Never?"

"Nope. Kind of a disappointing, I guess."

"But mysterious," he pointed out, suddenly so desperate to bring a smile to her face that he would have said anything, for an odd sadness crossed her expression in that split instant, almost too quickly to be properly seen, and he knew that this was far more than merely disappointing for her.

But she did smile; her eyes bright. "How about that. It'll stay that way too, since she's in no position to tell me."

He guessed that it was the whiskey that had loosened her tongue to this degree, because he couldn't imagine her speaking so glibly on the subject otherwise. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

She shrugged, avoiding his eyes. "It is what it is. And it's not really that sad either, so don't give me those pity-eyes."

"Isn't it?"

"Nah. I mean, he was probably a terrible person. Why else would have Mom refused to speak about him?"

Kaidan could think of quite a few other reasons, but he remained silent.

"Besides, you can't really miss what you never knew." She cleared her throat, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ears. "This is all kind of depressing, don't you think? Not appropriate date talk."

Something in his gut did a weak flip. "This is a date, huh?"

"Sure it is. Two people out on the town, having drinks and listening to weird music."

"You sure it's not a friendly excursion?"

"Maybe it would have been otherwise, but it's impossible for it to be a friendly excursion when I'm wearing something like this."

"Fair point," he managed, and he studiously avoiding letting his gaze drift down to take in that astoundingly sexy dress.

She cleared her throat, suddenly uncomfortable. "I didn't mean … I mean if you'd rather–"

"No," he cut in quickly. "This is fine."

"Just fine?"

"This is great," he said. "Just what I wanted. Though you might be right about the music."

"Weird, right?" she said, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder to stare at the musicians. "I was hoping for something a little more traditional."

"Yeah. Bit esoteric for me."

"Better than Flux though, right?"

"By leaps and bounds."

"Ashley eats that stuff up, but she's cut from a different cloth, you know?"

"That's not a bad thing."

She held up her hands. "No, no; I'm not saying it is! Actually, it was kind of fun to be a shadow in her world, you know. I never really got the chance for any of that stuff growing up."

"Going to clubs?"

"Not just that. All of it, really. Sharing clothes, getting dressed up, going out on the town. Stuff like that."

He frowned, suddenly overcome by the image of Shepard as a younger woman, home alone while the rest of her peers cavorted in various ways. Or Shepard as a young girl, stuck on her mom's ship, isolated from others her age. With all that he knew of her – bright, funny, kind – it seemed a terrible waste that she should be so cut off. Not that he was a stranger to feeling alone, but even in BAaT, he'd had friends. He'd had people to be young and stupid with.

He shook himself out of the reverie. "So thoughts on the whole institution?"

"I'm not sure it's my thing," she said. "This is more my speed. Though I don't really have the excuse you do."

"Excuse?"

"I mean, you stay away from places like Flux because of your debilitating migraines. I stay away because I'm unbearably awkward and ridiculous."

He shook his head. "I get the feeling you don't know yourself very well."

She waved him off, though he saw from her smile that she was pleased. "Anyway. What did Ashly have to do to get you out tonight?"

"Threats, bribes. The usual."

"Huh. I can't figure out if she thinks less or more or me that she didn't even resort to any of that."

"No?"

"Nope. I got a knock on my door and was informed of my new plans for the evening and then dragged off into the bathroom, where I was dressed and done up by a consummate professional. I bet you can't even tell that this dress is probably three sizes too big."

He couldn't, and he'd been looking. "Nope."

"So there you have it. I'm really the victim here."

"You know, you could have pulled rank if you really preferred staying in all night," he said with a grin. "From your presence here, I take it that you did not."

"Ha, is that so? I'm pretty sure you could have too, smartass."

"Maybe I wanted to go out."

"Ashley said she had to shove you off the ship."

That was putting it mildly. He had counted on having an evening more or less to himself, where he could finally catch up on his work without interruptions. But Ashley had come at him with that familiar mischievous glint in her eye, and he knew immediately what she had up her sleeve. No amount of protests could put her off, either; she'd ordered him to wear something nice and meet her in Flux later, and if he stood her up she'd never speak to him again. So he'd capitulated, because he knew Ash well enough to know once she got something her mind, there was no talking her out of it.

He grudgingly admitted to himself that he might have to thank her later. "That's about right," he said finally.

"She doesn't really take no for an answer, does she?"

"As she puts it, the Williams women are a decisive bunch."

"Hello, understatement."

He bit back a smile. "We all wish we could be like that."

"Yeah, you said it. I mean, I'm a Commander and I think I do pretty well sometimes, so at least there's that. But what would I give to live my whole life like her."

"Why don't you?"

"Easier said than done, you know," she chided. "I lack the intestinal fortitude."

"You don't actually believe that, do you?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. Did you see her with that guy?"

Kaidan knew she was only trying to steer the subject away from more dangerous waters, so he decided to let it go. "He doesn't even know what he's in for."

"Nah. I bet you he knows exactly what he's in for. Bet you he's right on board."

"You know she'll be smug tomorrow."

"Oh god. Strutting around pleased as punch. It's a good thing I like her so much. And well … I guess I owe her a bit too. She's responsible for this ridiculous ensemble."

"It's not ridiculous and you know it."

"Come on. She had to pin me in this thing. One wrong move and it all falls apart."

He took another sip of his drink, the better to hide the odd flush that had overtaken his face. Unbidden an image of her standing there with that taunting red dress sliding down her hips had forced its way into his mind, and he feared that if she looked any more closely at him, she'd see his desire written over his features as plain as daylight. But to see her like that, he thought; to finally know the exact shade of her skin, the shape of her breasts unencumbered –

"You make it sound like a real risk," he managed.

"Maybe it is. I've never gone out like this before. I don't even own clothes like this."

"That's too bad," he said before he could stop himself, and he nearly choked on his tongue as those words hung in the sudden pause between them, the only sounds being the strangely seductive music and the strains of soft conversation.

"Too bad, huh?" she said slowly. "Why's that?"

In any other situation he would have struggled to find a way out of this disastrous confession before working especially hard to pretend that it hadn't happened in the first place. But there was something oddly naked in her wide-eyed expression, as if she thought he was making fun of her, as if she feared the inevitable retraction of something she could hardly believe herself. He didn't see the Commander, then, but only the lonely woman who by some miracle found him interesting enough to share her time with. And he couldn't bear to hurt her with his fear.

"You look lovely," he said simply.

And he wasn't imagining the flush that rose on her cheeks, the small smile that seemed to him equal parts stunned and pleased with his confession. "Thank you," she said. "This is a good look on you, too."

"What is?"

"Civilian. Casual." Her grin took a predatory edge. "Like a handsome stranger."

"Handsome, huh?"

"Don't even play dumb. You know you are, and if you deny it, I will have to hurt you."

He held up his hands in defeat. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"Good."

They grew quiet as the musicians segued into a new piece, this one even stranger than the last. He could make out no melody and the harmonies were beyond his understanding, but it spoke to him regardless; of transparency, and of courage in the face of this plunge.

He was struck by a sudden understanding as he watched Shepard stir her whiskey absently, a lock of red hair curling on her neck like a bright flower pressed to snow; perhaps Ashley had taken pains to insist they go out in civilian dress so they could perhaps see each other in that light, without the grim specter of their ranks and the regs hanging between them. And it had worked, better than he could have ever imagined. For these last hours, he'd seen her like he might have had they met as strangers, purely through benign chance.

Not to say that Shepard wasn't beautiful normally, for she was – more than he knew how to bear. She was beautiful smudged with dirt, streaked with sweat, her eyes narrowed as she sighted down a target. She was beautiful in fatigues, sitting across from him at his workstation, picking at a loose thread on her pants and grinning unselfconsciously. She was beautiful in a dress, and he knew she'd be beautiful out of it.

She was beautiful when she talked about her family, her isolated childhood, those things specific to her perspective. She was beautiful when she smiled, when she laughed, when she leaned on her arm and looked up at him. She was beautiful giving orders, sipping whiskey, nodding her head to the music. She was beautiful, and it made him brave.

"Want to get out of here?" he asked her.

'Yeah," she said. "I could use something to eat, myself."

"Sounds like a plan to me."

They left the club and made their way through the Wards, though the haze of the music did not leave them, not even after they rejoined the crowd that never seemed to tire or cease, that rushed past them. He thought he might be drunk as he watched her shift through the crowd, each step as sinuous and graceful as a dance, the sway of her hips utterly maddening. He wondered desperately how they could go back to where they were – the days when she was his Commander and he obeyed her orders without struggling in such a way. He'd hardly allowed the thought to pass before realizing that things had never been that way for them, and they never would be.

Under the lights of the Citadel, Kaidan fell in love with Shepard. That kind brilliance seemed to embrace them, and he saw her as he never had before, as he had struggled gamely not to; as a beautiful woman, fascinating beyond compare, skilled and sure, and bright as if illuminated from within. Whatever slim resistance that remained in him evaporated, and he was left reeling from its loss. And he knew as he watched her move beside him, as his fingers skimmed the soft skin of her elbow, that there would be no return from this.

He was about to reach out for her hand when a high voice broke his concentration, close enough to startle both of them into flinching defensively, years of military conditioning making them sharp and defensive.

"Commander Shepard?!" cried the voice, and when Kaidan turned he saw that it was a wide-eyed man who had spoken. His expression was full of the inappropriate passion and verve of the obsessed, and he clutched a photo print in his hands, hard enough to tear to wrinkle the edges. Kaidan had never seen the man before, but from the almost inaudible groan he heard from Shepard, he guessed that she recognized this man.

"Conrad," she said, struggling gamely to inject levity in her voice, but her smile had become very tight. "It's nice to see you again."

"I saw that the Normandy docked here sixteen hours ago, so I've been looking for you this whole time!" said Conrad, standing too close for Kaidan's liking. "This is the last place that I ran into you, so I thought if I stayed here long enough you would turn up. Because you bought a new biotic amp at this shop, and a few pistols here. Unless you were working – because I know you're like that. The great Commander Shepard, hard at work, defeating Saren and the geth!" He seemed to notice what she was wearing, for when his gaze slid down his oddly fervent expression shifted to dumbstruck awe. "So, uh, what are you up to?"

Shepard's eyes were pinched with unhappiness. "Oh, you know. Just taking a bit of leave."

"I'll say! You look fantastic! I mean, you look like you could still hurt me pretty bad if you wanted, but you wouldn't, because you're not like that. Not the great Commander Shepard!" He beamed. "You off to any place specific?"

"Oh – I mean – we were just about to go back," Shepard said hastily. "Yeah. Kind of a long night. Lots to do tomorrow. You know."

"Ah, that's too bad." Conrad was disappointed for only a brief moment before he brightened again, leaning even closer. "Back to the Normandy? I've always wanted to see it! I mean, I've seen it on the news and stuff, but never in person! My wife won't even believe that I got to see it up close and personal, but I've got my camera and I –"

"I don't think that's such a great idea, Conrad," Shepard said, leaning away. "It's military and approved personnel only."

"But you're Commander Shepard – you could approve me no problem! I mean, it is your ship and you set the rules, and even if not they would have to listen to you because you're Commander Shepard and –"

"I'm not really in the practice of letting civilians on my ship," Shepard said with bite, her brows low over stern eyes.

"Oh." Again Conrad was disappointed for only a brief moment before he latched onto a new scheme. "Well, how about we go somewhere else? I have so many questions to ask you, like what was Elysium like? How much does your field pack weigh? What's your favorite kind of gun? Some kind of pistol, right? All the pictures of you show you with pistols. What is your –"

Kaidan could take no more – one look at Shepard's miserable expression decided him. "Conrad, was it? I'm really sorry, but the Commander and I really need to be going. Nice to meet you."

Shepard jumped in before the man could say another word. "Really nice. See you later," she said before turning sharply on her heel and positively fleeing in the opposite direction.

"Really nice? Well, wait! What do you mean later? Like, a few days later, or a few weeks later, or later like an indeterminate later? Because with me it's usually the indeterminate kind of later, and later ends up being a really long time, and I'm just wondering –"

"Oh my god," Shepard whispered as she picked up her pace, weaving deftly through the crowd.

"Looks like you have a fan," Kaidan smirked.

"That's putting it a little lightly, don't you think?" Shepard snapped. "I can't figure out if he wants to be me, if he wants me, or if he wants to cut me up and wear my skin."

"Commander Shepard! Wait!"

"He's not going to leave me alone," she muttered, pinching her brow. "He'll probably stand outside the Normandy and wait for me to show my face."

This sounded true enough, even though Kaidan hardly knew the man. "Let's lose him."

"What?"

He didn't respond; instead he took her hand and broke into a sprint, moving so quickly through the crowd that it readily parted for them. Another woman might have been caught off guard, but she easily matched his pace. And though this was nothing like running from an enemy that could do real harm, he was filled with the same kind of thrilling adrenaline, the same vital heartbeat, the pulse that became a demand the louder it grew. Her fingers were warm, he noticed, and so impossibly soft. He had wondered what it would be like to take them in his hands, and the pretense of escape had given him the perfect chance. He did not think he'd ever be able to let them go.

They rounded corners and dodged passers-by with military grace, and he heard Shepard break into laughter so beautiful that he resolved to hold it close, so that if he ever forgot what it was to be joyful, he only needed to think of it and he would remember.

"In here," she gasped, pulling him into a dark corner where two modules met. Only a bit of light from the streets penetrated the darkness, so that he could make out the vague outline of her body, the familiar suggestion of her features. They were close here, separated only by a few shivering inches – close enough that it would be an easy thing to breach that distance once and for all. God, did he want to.

She let out a breathless laugh, pressing her hand to her chest. "We lost him," she said, grinning up at him. "My hero."

But Kaidan could not speak. Whatever friendly mood they had established from earlier had all but disappeared. They were alone, they were close, they were cloaked in near darkness. They were stripped of rank and regs. He only had to lean slightly to breach the gap between them. And there she was, as she never had been before; breathing hard, the dim light catching in her eyes, her hair mused from exertion. And he thought that perhaps a stronger man might be able to resist her, but he was tired of being strong.

His surrender was a slow thing; an accumulation of all that had passed between them, these odd circles they had paced around each other. He brought his hand to her cheek as if to test himself, and he marveled that he could manage even this in light of his own failing control, the desire that slowly took possession of his thoughts and limbs. He touched her cheek as if to test her as well, to give her the chance to break away and end this before it could destroy them both. Maybe part of him wanted her to; the part of him that clung to rule and regulations and a rigid routine, his days ordered as neatly as the innards of a watch.

"Kaidan," she breathed, but it wasn't reproach that he heard in her voice. It was a plea – it was that same surrender he felt pulling him under, to where there would be no return.

He closed the distance between them and pressed his lips to hers.

Foolishly, he thought he was prepared. He thought he had arranged his thoughts and desires into an agreeable formation, where he could indulge them and control them in equal turn, but her breath hitched beneath his lips and whatever hope he had to that effect vanished. He'd forgotten it even existed when she threaded her hands behind his neck, pulling him closer, shuddering as he kissed her more deeply, as he pulled her against him with so much force that she gasped again.

There were no words or thoughts; only brief flashes of sensation that pierced the haze that had pulled him under. He caught a flash of red when he trailed his lips over her jaw, down her neck, when she shivered ecstatically in his arms. He felt his blood roaring in his ears, surging, pressed painfully. He heard a heady moan in that shuddering air around them and realized that it came from his own lips, that he had lost awareness of his own body, so that when her teeth grazed his lips he was powerless and powerful all at once – pinned by her desire and emboldened by it.

He could feel the outline of her body against his, the straining weight of her breasts pressed into his chest, and without thinking he trailed his hands over them, testing – waiting for her to turn him away. But she moaned too and he could not resist such a plea; too beautiful for its lack of shape. He skimmed them, cupped them, savored them, and she arced under his hands. And he thought what it would be like to hold them without her dress barring the way, what it would be like to slide his needing hands up the smooth expanse of her body, until they were joined together, skin to skin.

He kissed her more fiercely, then; his hands fisting the flimsy cloth of the dress, twisting it as if he wished he could rip it straight off. Her wanting hands, oh how they burned at either side of his face, holding him fast. How they demanded, how they begged! He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her so close that he could feel every curve, every line, how perfect –

With a yelp of pain, he pulled away and a shower of pins and clips rained down at their feet. The dress that had held to every perfect curve of her body now hung off her shoulders, giving him the paradoxical impression that she had diminished before his eyes. "Oh, shit!" she hissed, pulling the dress close around her body, but he had seen – where the fabric gaped, he'd caught a glimpse of the half-moon of her breasts straining against her bra, and the thought that he might have forgotten how to breathe.

"Kaidan, your arm," she said, taking it with gentle hands. In the dim light of their hidden corner, he could see a half dozen pinpricks quickly pooling with blood, from where he had held her tightly enough to wound. He was breathing hard, half-mad, driven wild by the sight of her nearly undone before him. And she realized it then, for her wide gaze met his, and in that moment he found that he could have studied it for a thousand years and not even then unearthed every hidden place there, every thought that raced across those expressive features, so heartbreakingly beautiful that it left him speechless.

"Shit," she breathed again. And Kaidan figured it was an admirably succinct summary of the situation.

 


	20. Chapter 20

Later, Shepard would look back on that moment and wonder if she had dreamed up the whole thing.

It began like a dream. The solid feel of him, the weight of his wanting hands. She knew it and felt it, real as daylight, as gravity, just as she knew the end of these foolish circles they paced around the other, caught in each other's pull but still so afraid. She felt like she was falling, but his hands where there to guide her descent, and she knew; she was not alone in this. Finally, she wasn't alone.

Then the scene had veered quickly from drama to mockery: she and Kaidan awkwardly bent over his arm, which was covered with a half dozen pinpricks oozing blood; the sound of her pulse crashing in her ears; the way his proximity thrilled unlike anything she'd known. How close he was, and how closed he'd been. The desperate need of his kiss, hands pressing her close . . .

"Shit," she said again. A dim part of her mind wondered if she'd forgotten every other word in her admittedly slim vocabulary. "Just – shit!"

"It's fine," Kaidan said, making a fairly decent show of calm for a man whose arm had just served as a pincushion. "It's no geth colossus."

It wasn't really that funny, and considering their mutual transgression the situation should have remained stark and awkward, but one look at Kaidan trying so hard to keep it together, his beautiful hands wrapped around his arm, and a half-hysterical bark of laughter escaped her before she could clamp her lips together.

"I think I warned you about the pins, right?" Shepard said quickly, struggling to catch her breath as she twisted the loose dress around her body and refastened in place with the stray pins. "I'm pretty sure I did."

"I guess I forgot."

"Guess you did," she breathed. The moment had shattered but he was still here, and she was suddenly full of stupid courage, blistering regard; she could no more stand to be apart than she could surrender to Saren and lay down to die.

He wasn't bleeding to death, and they were still alone – pressed so close in this dark corner that she felt waves of heat coming from his skin. She wondered if she should pull away, if he regretted reaching for her first. But she saw him slowly tense in a new way, remembering. Awash by where they had been only moments before. She reached for him – half desperate, half unsure – and one tentative hand curled around his. (How impossible that his hands should burn like the heart of a star! Was it possible for skin to sear with such heat that she felt she would ignite beneath it?) And he understood. Whatever it was that thrummed in her, that thrilling, drumbeat pulse, it thrummed in him too.

He kissed her again, pincushion arm be damned. He wrapped her in his arms so closely that she could feel every contour of him, every hard angle, every taut muscle straining against hers. Together they discovered the shared fear of those who love – the pulse-pounding desire to keep, the knot in your throat that fears inevitable separation. Yet even so, they were fearless. He did not pull away when she framed his jaw between her hands, thrilling as they skimmed over sandpaper rough skin. She gasped, but not from fear, when his fingers skimmed her breasts.

"Sam," he breathed, kissing her neck. "Sam . . ."

(And she could have cried. The sound of her real name on his tongue was such music, like a whisper in morning, goose-pimpled flesh below eager lips. Who had ever called her by her name in this way – more promise than demand? No one – before or since.)

They were truly insatiable now. A dim part of her mind feared that they would only break apart if they were discovered. And then, would they care? She might have before she knew the taste of his lips.

Later she would know this as the moment when she had shattered this illusion, but in this moment all she knew was the feel of him, the sound of his breath hard in her ears as he struggled in vain. She thought to free herself for him, but when her fingers strayed to the buckle of his pants, he pulled away as suddenly as if she had hurt him.

"I –" she gasped. She could not bear the sudden emptiness of her arms, so she pressed one hand to her heart, as if willing it to be calm. "I'm didn't –"

"No, I –"

"I was just –"

He took a breath, then another. Addled by his closeness and the darkness, she did not recognize the fear in his eyes at first. She wouldn't until much later. "I'm sorry, Commander."

She recoiled as if he had slapped her.

From the way his eyes widened slightly, he must not have meant for the words to come out the way they did, but she heard the subtle distance in his voice, the fear and subsequent step backward. They had come too close, and now it seemed that for the moment, he preferred to pretend it hadn't happened at all.

Would that she could claim the same. They drew apart, but already she longed to pull him close. It was a need unlike anything she'd known – a compulsion closer to the drive to breathe than fleeting desire, so easily broken.

For a brief, daylight moment, she had been Sam. For a moment, they had gone to the heart between them, the barest place, where ranks and titles had no bearing. But she was Commander Shepard again, and she would be until the day she died.

"Come on, then," she said, and she turned her back on him, because it hurt to see the increasing distance in his eyes. Each step further from their hidden corner only increased her shame. "Let's get you patched up."

They made the trek back to the Normandy in self-conscious silence – no longer joined by the arm or hands, but spaced a preoccupied three pace apart - and she wondered how it was possible to come so close to a man in one moment and be flung so far in the next. She wondered how it was possible for three mere paces to feel as if it encompassed the galaxy entire.

* * *

Kaidan slept badly. He didn't expect decent rest after the events of the evening, but a very weary part of him hoped despite it. Instead, he was haunted by odd flashes of sensory input that were far too tangible and real for dreams, or even memories. How easily did his mind return to that hidden corner on the Citadel, when she was close enough to share a heartbeat, when he'd thrown caution to the wind and pulled her close, hands splayed on her back, need like the edge of a knife, wanting the red dress beneath his hands to give way to soft skin.

It came as no surprise to him that he woke with a migraine and a hangover.

He considered his situation as a bolt of pain wracked his tender skull, rattling like an unsecured door. He'd had too much to drink and made an inappropriate advance toward his commanding officer. That was it. That was the whole of it.

He did not consider it relevant that she'd wanted it, that she'd breathed his name and in it he heard a siren's call, a plea and surrender all in one, and he'd taken her in his arms as if nothing stood between them, as if nothing could. He'd known only that this was inevitable. He'd known only that he needed her.

Then there was pain, then humiliation. She was laughing, then she was kissing him even more deeply, her hands straying farther, wanting just as deeply as he did. He'd remembered in that moment when he caught sight of her slim fingers playing at his belt that these were the hands of Commander Shepard, more comfortable on the trigger of a gun, and for want of a better reaction, he had thrown her title in her face, cruelly, callously. How clearly did he see her face now – stunned, a little hurt, then smooth and professional in the next instant, as if a curtain had come down between them.

It was what he knew – to always leave a way out. He assumed that her ease regarding him gave her the ability to divine every thought that crossed his mind, every facet that built his character. And at the core of him was this – to leave a way out, to mind the rules, the regulations, to keep an eye on the inevitable. He thought she might have understood, and it only occurred to him much later that this was ridiculous; he'd never told her as much, so how should she have known?

Maybe he should apply for a transfer. If he cared about his integrity and career, he'd do so without a second thought. They'd grown too close, entwined as they were, inextricable, and only a clean cut could would work now.

But beyond the desire was care. She was on a dangerous path, and he knew that he'd never forgive himself if he abandoned her on it now. So in that moment he resolved to tough it out. He'd figure out the details soon – he'd have to, in fact – but regardless of what happened between them, he would not abandon her.

Scrubbing at his unshaven face, he trudged to the mess hall on crew deck, intent on a meal that would settle his uneasy stomach. It was either too early or too late for the mealtime rush, as the mess was populated with only a few stragglers nursing lukewarm cups of coffee, desperately trying to ease their exhaustion before the start of their shifts. Kaidan could commiserate; sometime today they were setting out for Noveria, and at the moment he'd be little better than a green recruit at his post.

He poured himself a cup of coffee and scrambled some eggs without really paying attention to what he was doing, and only the smell of burning butter brought him crashing back to the moment. But instead of tossing the ruined eggs, he dumped them on his plate. It would make little difference, he supposed. Food these days had no taste.

"LT?" It was Ashley, of course; the only one on this ship with the courage to use a title as a term of endearment and not a shield.

He raised his hand in greeting. "Morning."

"Morning," she returned, plopping down across the table from him. "You look like shit."

And despite himself, he grinned. "I don't know what I'd do without your tact."

"Wallow in misery, probably. Wander aimlessly."

"Heh. How was your evening?"

She took an ambitious bite of her breakfast, chewing with verve. "Delightful. Splendid. A ripping good time."

"You look pretty pleased with yourself," he noted, swallowing a mouthful of burnt eggs. "I saw you getting pretty friendly with a handsome stranger."

"Oh, really? Was that before or after you fell all over Shepard with your tongue hanging out?"

"I'm fairly certain it didn't happen that way," he hedged.

"You sure, LT?" Ashley's grin became predatory. "I saw your face. I think you actually choked on your tongue."

"That's not physically possible."

"It sure is. Don't argue." Her grin widened as she leaned closer, spinning her fork between her fingers. "I seem to notice the two of you disappeared the moment I looked away, and no one saw you for the rest of the night. I wonder what you two could have possibly been up to."

Heat rushed to his face, but he kept his expression carefully neutral. "We listened to some quieter music and had a few drinks."

"And that was it, huh?"

He couldn't lie. He wanted to – in fact, her pushy insistence to dissect every detail of his personal life nearly warranted a lie – but he took one look at her expression, sweetly interested rather than malicious and cruel, and the lie withered and died in his throat. "I bet you can imagine what happened after that."

"Shit," she breathed, an absurd echo to Shepard from the night before. "No wonder you look rough."

"Thanks," he muttered.

"I mean – not in a bad way. You know what I mean." She fell silent, watching him push burnt eggs in circles on his plate. "So … what happened?"

"You know what happened."

"I mean, why do you look so guilty?"

"Because I broke regs?"

"No, I don't think so. You wouldn't be wrapped up into knots over just that. Or maybe you would, but you'd do a better job of hiding it."

He stared at her. They'd known each other for such a short span of time, and already she'd somehow gained these preternatural insights into his character. She also managed to use them in a way that irritated him more often than not. He didn't know anything about having a sister, but he imagined this was probably the closest he'd come to it.

"Just … managed to handle the situation with my characteristic skill," he said unwillingly.

"And by that you mean …?"

"I threw her rank in her face, when things got … close. She looked like I'd hit her."

"Yeah, you kind of did," Ashley said, frowning. "What would you do that?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, cowed. "I wanted a way out."

"Why?!"

"You know why."

"I don't really. You're not a coward, not on the field anyway."

He shot her a look. "I'm a realist. And I … always try to leave a way out."

"Nice and cryptic. Is this the part where you avoid talking about your mysterious backstory?" she asked him with a quirked brow.

"Yes," he shot back.

She sighed, shoveling her breakfast into piles before smashing them down. "I'll stop giving you a hard time about it, I guess. God knows I don't have the space to criticize. Just … things that are worthwhile aren't ever really easy, you know?"

Kaidan stared at the freckle between his thumb and forefinger and said nothing.

"I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this situation, because I'm not. Just seems to me that something – or someone – important is worth the effort. And the risk."

She had a point, as always. And if there ever was a person worth the effort and risk, it was Shepard. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Good. See that you do," she said imperiously, a small smile twitching on her lips.

"I hope you don't think you distracted me from my original question," he said.

Ashley laughed. "Fine, fine. Yes, I met a 'handsome stranger.' We danced, we drank, we enjoyed each other's company."

"And by that, you mean …?"

"No, not like that," Ashley said, hands jerking emphatically. "Not on the first date."

"Right, right. Got to have some standards."

"It's not about standards," she retorted whip fast, a furrow of irritation forming between her brows. "It's about preference."

He didn't speak for a moment. "You're right. I'm sorry."

What irritation she felt was gone from her features in an instant; dissolved by the sincerity of his apology. "It's fine," she said, waving it away. "Don't worry about it."

"Right. Anyways?"

She smiled a little, gazing at some point between her hands, though her eyes suddenly were very far away. "His name's Brian Lamont. He's C-Sec. We mostly just talked."

And despite himself, Kaidan found himself mirroring her smile. "Talked, huh?"

"Don't get smug. He's just … nice. He's really nice."

"There's a glowing endorsement."

"Well, come on. Do you know how rare a nice guy is these days?"

"No rarer than a bad person," Kaidan equivocated, shrugging. "There's plenty of each around."

"Yeah, but the bad ones tend to be the loud ones. The good ones hide."

"I won't argue that," Kaidan said, taking another bite of eggs. "Mr. Lamont know you're Alliance?"

"I may have forgotten to mention it," Ashley said, looking away. "Not like I'm ashamed or anything, but I guess … well, maybe I enjoyed playing pretend last night."

"What do you mean?"

Ashley sighed, tucking a strand of hair that had come loose from her bun behind her ear. "I didn't want to be some uniform on leave to this guy, you know? You've got one night, and then you're buzzing out of the system, never to be seen again, whether by your design or not. I don't regret being Alliance, not even a little, but sometimes … well, it's easier when you're a civilian, isn't it? When you don't have to head out on a word. Maybe everyone else is okay with being nothing more than a blip on the radar, but me? I don't know." She laid her hands flat on the table, contemplating, and he found himself struck by her sudden melancholy; such a neat mirror to his own. "It's just different when you meet someone …"

"Nice?" he supplied.

A small ghost of her smile turned her lips. "Yeah," she said. "And I mean, he is. He's just … nice."

"Why are you talking like you'll never see him again?" he asked, spurred by her melancholy.

"Because I probably won't, LT."

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't know, exactly," she said, pursing her lips. "Just a feeling, I guess."

"You said he's C-Sec, and we have lots of business on the Citadel."

"Until I get stationed somewhere else. Then what?"

He stared at her closed expression, struggling for a reply. "I didn't know you were a pessimist."

"I'm a realist," she said, arching a brow. "And so are you. You should understand, better than anyone."

She was right. Kaidan approached life as a realist did, with what he hoped was an equanimous outlook, and for the most part this realistic bent went unchallenged. But beneath this, he nursed an illogical sensibility, that was taken in by appeals to the heart, that hurt for others as it did for itself. That was susceptible to love. It was this part of him that found Ashley's confession unsettling.

"What was it you said?" he pointed out on sudden inspiration. "That something – or someone – worthwhile is worth the risk and effort?"

She glowered at him. "No fair using my words against me."

"What better way to use them? You know it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the advice if you can't even live by your own words."

"You don't fight fair, Alenko."

"Yes, I do," he said, and he smiled. "I make it a point to."

She smiled too. "I guess you do."

They finished their cold breakfast in companionable silence, and though he still felt hungover and tired and so guilty he feared every positive memory of his would curdle into bitterness, he knew some relief. There was relief in the simple act of sitting with someone who understood.


	21. Chapter 21

Shepard was an expert at personal avoidance. It had taken her a few years to realize that she learned this from her mother, who preferred to shelve personal feelings in favor of work, and never met an emotion she couldn't stifle with long hours and days of silence. Her childhood was often punctuated by weeks of this, where her mother became remote as the Andromeda, and just as impossible to reach.

So it shouldn't have surprised Shepard that her default reaction to Kaidan's rejection would be to become just as remote as her mother. She spent the trek to Noveria as coolly distant as she could manage – issuing orders without her usual heart, resuming inspection like an automaton. She made brief conversation with Garrus regarding the Mako (calibrating it had become something of a pet project for him) and spoke with Wrex regarding his previous experience with Saren, when he was just one bounty hunter of many, the only one with instinct to match his prowess, the only one who survived the encounter.

She obsessed over Saren and the geth. She pored through extranet archives in search of the history of his operations, the missions he'd undergone, the choices he made. What she found horrified her; a personality in stark opposition to hers – a man who saw only the end, and considered any means justified. She saw a long line of bodies left in his wake, and decades where he'd operated under the hand of the Council, who seemed to agree that their will was more important than a few lives here and there. Suddenly their disdain over Shepard's choice to save colonists and scientists over ruins and data made more sense.

She worked, and heard the voices of her enemies, preserved by Tali's recording.  _The Conduit, the Conduit … one step closer to the return of the Reapers._ She shivered, but not from cold of space.

Shame came fast on the heels of these discoveries. She should have put more thought into her mission from the beginning, instead of fawning over a pair of stupid brown eyes, attached to a stupid body, with stupid words that cut through her defenses, straight to her heart. She should have run on to meet these nightmares because it was her job. She fought nightmares so civilians didn't have to. Instead, she'd sat on her ship and lusted,  _longed_ for a man she could not have.

Shepard knew she should have sought Anderson's personal experience from the beginning, especially considering the man and the mission. What had stopped her? Propriety? Consideration for Anderson's past shame? No – it was more likely distraction, in the shape of a handsome lieutenant.

With a groan, Shepard buried her face in her hands. If it was possible to hate herself more that she did at this moment, she might burn a hole in the floor of her cabin.

Well, why stop now? That ship had sailed, to borrow an inappropriate phrase. Kaidan had made his stance on their situation painfully clear. She was a Commander and he was a Lieutenant, and that was the only shape their relationship would ever have – the stiff, dutiful line that comprised the chain of command. Friendship was pushing a boundary that shouldn't be toyed with, because it'd become clear she had no self-control. She'd look at him and desire would clench hard in her stomach, make it hard to breathe. She'd listen to him and long to live in the spaces between his words.

In any other situation she would have sought out company – maybe Liara in the med bay, diligently researching the Protheans, or Tali in the engine room, diligently researching the geth. She might have called up Anderson and asked for his advice regarding the inevitable confrontation with Matriarch Benezia, as they were fast closing in on her, only a few days out from Noveria.

But she could not force any words past the solid block of self-loathing lodged in her throat. So she handled the situation like Hannah Shepard had, so many years ago; she worked. She obsessed. She avoided.

They were one day out from Noveria when she finally ended her self-imposed exile of duty and made a slightly less rigid sweep of the ship. The crew seemed to have picked up on the not so subtle change in their commander, for they saluted her rigidly as she passed, hastily resuming their duties to preempt any lecture. Another dull twinge of shame echoed through her. She hadn't been fooling anyone; indeed, her sourness had made everyone miserable. And it wasn't like any more had been accomplished because of it, either.

With an imperceptible sigh, she made her way to the cockpit. Joker craned around when he heard her approach, his eyebrow arching. "Commander."

"Joker," she said. "Mind if I join you up here?"

"I don't know. You going to glower over my shoulder like last time?"

She flushed. "Not unless you give me a reason to, Flight Lieutenant."

"All right, all right. Ease off. Just wondering if I've got dorky Shepard or robot Commander on my hands."

Shepard considered this. "Neither," she sighed finally. "Too tired for either."

"You not sleeping?"

"Not really," she said, flopping next to him in the copilot's chair. "Working."

"On?"

She threw up her hands. "What else? Saren. The Geth. The Conduit."

"The Reapers," Joker said, twisting his voice ominously.

"Right."

"Breaking your head get you any closer to a solution?"

She fixed him with an irritated glance. "What if I said yes, huh? Would you lay off the snarking?"

He snorted. "Do you even  _know_  me?"

And for the first time in what seemed like a few years, she grinned. Her face felt odd and stiff around the smile. "Fine! You made your point. You dick."

"My, my, Commander Shepard; what colorful vocabulary you have! Where's a crew of reporters when you need one?"

"Oh my god, don't even joke about that kind of thing," Shepard said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You'll give me a heart attack."

"Wouldn't want that. Trying getting something like that off your record."

He hadn't meant it in any way, but the sad fact was that another Lieutenant on this ship had said something very similar back when things were new and hopeful, when she only knew that he was handsome and charming and kind. Before she could stop the reaction in its tracks, she flinched away from Joker and turned back toward the window, watching the swallowing dark of space pass them.

"Yeah," she echoed distantly.

Joker noticed her expression and frowned – he was not nearly as dense as he liked to pretend. "Did I say something?"

She waved him off. "Don't worry about it. Tell me how things are going up here."

"Pretty much normal. As normal as things can be on a ship like this." He stretched in his chair, his hands hovering over the console. "I keep wondering when I'll get a chance to really put this ship through its paces, you know?"

"Probably when this whole thing is over," Shepard said, tucking a ragged strand of hair behind her ears. She did not add the condition  _if we live,_ though it seemed to echo endlessly through her thoughts, mixing with wordless dread the longer she considered Saren and the geth, Saren and the Conduit, Saren …

"Yeah, I figured something like that. Though then I get the feeling that there will always be something else, because that's our thing. You're Commander Shepard, and I drive your ride."

"You got it."

"Not such a bad gig, then."

"Maybe," Shepard said, and something occurred to her. "Maybe with all this crazy nonsense with Saren and the geth, you'll get that chance for some flashy heroics."

Joker kissed his fingers and raised them high. "Here's hoping."

She snorted. "Good one."

"I'm serious!"

"You know, most normal people don't get excited at the thought of dangerous situations."

"Most people are not astoundingly talented Alliance pilots."

Despite herself, she laughed. "That is definitely true. Though I bet they manage being modest a little better than some people I know."

"Psh. Modesty is pretty much all you have when you can't do anything. Besides, how dumb is it to pretend you're not good at something just to make someone feel better about the fact that they can't do it too? That's all modesty really is."

"That's … surprisingly observant," Shepard said, blinking in surprise. "And obnoxious."

"Obnoxious? Come on."

"Well, it is!"

"How is it obnoxious to know what you can do and to not be shy in letting other people know it? Especially if that person is your commanding officer?"

"All right, all alright! Spare me the lecture. I don't think I can handle it again."

Joker made a disgruntled sound but she caught the slight twitch at the corner of his lips, betraying his amusement.

She lost track of time in the cockpit, lulled by the blips of Joker's console and the thrum of the engine beneath their feet, the small sighs and huffs that Joker let out every now and then, as if to convince himself he was still there. It was easy, comforting silence, and soon she'd crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes, hovering in the grey space between waking and dreams.

It was in this safe, warm place where she almost forget Saren and the geth, Benezia and the Conduit, and the inexplicable threat of the Reapers, looming like a blade above her neck. Here she almost forgot about Kaidan and the hurt that had packed around her heart.

A rude bleat from the console shook her awake and she shot upward, heart racing. Joker shook his head and tapped his ear, as if to indicate the comm. She scrambled for it. "This is the SSV Normandy, come in?"

" _Normandy, this is Admiral Hackett. We've got a situation in the area that requires your expertise."_

She sat stock straight, holding her breath. She knew his business voice all too well. "Let's hear it."

_"A group of fanatical biotics have captured the chairman of the Parliament Subcommittee for Transhuman studies. The MSV Ontario sustained heavy damage and is now dead in space. Get in there and take them down."_

"Shit," Joker breathed, almost too quietly to be heard. She shushed him anyway. "What's the priority on saving the chairman?"

She heard Hackett take a breath. " _Saving the chairman would be my preference, but we have to make it clear to the terrorists that these tactics don't work."_ A pause. " _Your top priority is to neutralize the biotics."_

"Do you know what they're asking for?"

 _"They're L2 biotics, and most of them are suffering severe side effects from the implants. The chairman's subcommittee recently denied a request for reparations for all L2 biotics. Apparently they'd like the chairman to reconsider."_ She wasn't imagining the bleak tone of his voice.

She cleared her throat. "Understood Admiral. I'll do what I can."

_"I appreciate you taking the time for this, Commander. I'm sending you the coordinates now. Good luck. Fifth fleet out."_

She figured it didn't warrant mentioning that she would have done whatever Hackett asked her, even if that order had been to jump to her certain death for the good of the galaxy. She leaned closer to the intercom and activated it. "Williams, Alenko. Get your gear and meet me by the airlock. Tali and Garrus, you're on standby." To Joker she said, "Can you get us in position?"

"Can I?" Joker scoffed. "Watch and be amazed."

She didn't reply, instead striding through the bridge to the crew deck, her thoughts a whirling mess. She tried to ignore that the mere mention of L2 implanted biotics had sent a sick thrill running through her gut. It was obvious, of course – Kaidan was in the best position to negotiate the chairman's survival with the terrorists. Their trials were his own; who better to empathize with their suffering?

Yet still the thought of facing him again made her stomach turn.

* * *

Kaidan drew his pistol and craned into the dark hold of the  _MSV Ontario._ To his left Shepard waited, every muscle in her body engaged as she listened, like a cat about to pounce on unsuspecting prey. He glanced at her and saw her eyes narrowed intently, dark as pitch. This was the face of the great Commander, the strategist, the negotiator, the warrior without peer. This was a stranger, wearing a beautifully familiar face.

He swallowed as an excruciating bolt of pain lanced through his skull, making his vision shiver around the edges until the darkness seemed to flex and twist before his eyes. His stomach curled around a sick wave of nausea, and he bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood. Before Shepard commanded him to the airlock he'd been about to check in to the medbay, as he was currently suffering from the worst migraine he'd had in a very long time.

So all in all, the situation was a bit complicated.

"Keep to cover," Shepard whispered, her voice crawling between the waves of pain and making a home in his besieged skull.

He should have said something. He'd had time to; in the cockpit, in the airlock. When he caught a glimpse of her putting on her armor, a flash of bare skin peeking at the hollow of her collarbone. Too late now. He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath, counting backwards, forcing the pain to the back of his mind through sheer force of will alone. He'd had practice at this. He knew what to do.

But there was only so much willpower could do for a migraine of this severity, one that affected eyesight, concentration, the ability to breathe. His hands shook on the barrel of his gun.

He was halfway to speaking when Shepard broke from cover and moved like a wraith through the cargo bay, her pistol trained at eye level, sharp and deadly as he'd ever seen her. So he shadowed her and put all thought from his mind. He instead tried to occupy an airless place in his mind, where pain or feeling did not register, where there was only steely control.

A shot splattered the cargo behind him, and he threw up a barrier three seconds too late; if the terrorist's aim had been true, he'd be leaking blood through a strategically placed head wound. Instead, all he felt was the knife of pain that rooted around his skull, slowing his reaction time, making him dull and worthless. As the crackle of biotics surged over his skin he felt another twist of agony so violent that he retched, and only then did Shepard look at him. He saw her wide eyes, her fear –

"It's the Alliance!" one of the terrorists shouted, as if they'd placed their lips on his ear and screamed. He was stupid, stupid for not saying anything, stupid for thinking he could push through when his skull was coming apart at the seams –

He rounded on them and shot one through the shoulder, cursing that he'd missed, marveling that he'd managed to hit anything at all. He saw Shepard as if she were a point of singular focus in a blurring world; throwing warps, frying shields with her Omni-tool, neutralizing threats before they even properly manifested. And in his addled state, he knew in one frozen instant that this was the woman he loved, without ever deciding to make that choice. There were no two Shepards – the woman and the Commander – they were one in the same. He couldn't have one without the other. He couldn't have either.

He was useless, stupid, incompetent, in excruciating pain. He saw a biotic coming right at her with glowing fists and wide unseeing eyes, as if longing to punch through her chest and toss her aside. Madness was a side effect, he remembered distantly; maybe this was his own.

A churning band of energy formed around his own hands as they curled into fists, and with a cry of pain he hurled the warp across the hold until it slammed into the biotic with so much force that it lifted the man right off his feet and sent him crashing into the wall. There was a snap, a gurgling gasp, and the man bonelessly fell to the floor.

Only after the biotics in the cargo bay were neutralized did he feel sick guilt mingling with the nausea – ever since Vyrnnus, he had avoided taking lives with his biotics. But he'd seen a threat barreling toward her and hadn't thought; he'd only reacted.

He felt like the Thorian had purged his skull once again, though this time there were no clever fingers, no whispers – only the echo of agony ringing like a foul melody. But he drew level to Shepard and nodded without speaking, watching with horror and fascination as she stared at him like she'd never seen him before in her life. Only then did her shape blur out of focus.

"You all right, Lieutenant?" she asked him, and he wasn't imaging the way her voice snapped on his title.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. Behind her, the walls shivered.

They wound through the halls of the ship on quiet, careful feet, though it made no difference; he heard each footfall as if they were made of lead. He swallowed another acid wave of nausea, burning in the back of his throat, and prayed for the first time in many years.

Shepard burst through the doorway into one of the cabins, and it took Kaidan a good three seconds to process the scene; the chairman on his knees, the terrorist leader pressing the mouth of a pistol to the back of his skull. Kaidan recognized the wild look in his eye, the way they leapt from corner to corner, formulating an escape.

"Put the gun down," Shepard said calmly. "Let's not do anything we'll regret here."

The leader spoke like he hadn't heard her. "See how it is?" he hissed. "You write letters and everyone ignores you. Use the proper channels, you get put in the slush pile. Force is the only thing people appreciate."

"Please," Chairman Burns gasped. "I was only trying to help –"

"Shut the fuck up," the leader snapped, shoving the pistol into the chairman's skull with renewed force. "We've all had just about enough of your lies."

"Sir, let's not –" Shepard began.

"Do anything we'll regret? Why not? What do we have to lose? Since the chairman here decided that we don't get reparations, what do we have to live for?"

"But I've changed my mind!" Burns pleaded. "After seeing you all, I've decided to help!"

"Where was this empathy back when it mattered?" the leader snarled. "Some L2 biotics are nearly crippled by the side effects, but you didn't care when we came to you; not until we put a gun to your head. What kind of shit-eating liar are you, huh?!"

Kaidan saw Shepard watch the man, noting his hands, his wild eyes, cracked lips seeping little pinpricks of blood. He saw her measure his threats against his instability, the way his finger curled over the trigger of his gun, how his eyes shone in the harsh light of the  _MSV Ontario._

"You think your little stunt here is going to make it better for L2s?" Shepard said. Her gun lowered slightly – not enough to remove the leader from her sights entirely, but enough to put him more at ease. "You think people are going to want to help L2s after this? They're going to see you as crazy terrorists, and they wouldn't be wrong. Let the chairman go and let him help you."

"We let him go, this gets swept under the rug. People need to know about us! They need to know what the government's done to us, and how they won't even help now that we're falling apart!"

Kaidan saw the mad gleam in the leader's eye, his index finger curling on the trigger of his gun. Shepard wasn't getting through to them. In the span of a second the chairman would be dead before the biotics turned their weapons on them. He saw Shepard catching a bullet high, right through her slim, smooth neck, right at the hollow there, and the words spilled out before he could stop them.

"People do know," he said through another wave of pain. "Especially now, after what you've done. They know all about what you go through."

The leader rounded on him. "What would you know about it?"

"I'm an L2, like you," Kaidan said calmly. What a strange calm it was – a razorpoint center in a swirling world of pain, with biotic terrorists and terrified chairmen and his beautiful Commander, remote as any star. "I know that if you keep going with this, there's only one way it'll end for you. And I know you don't want that. Put your guns down, and let the chairman help you."

Nobody spoke, though it was far from silent in the cabin; the shivering walls, the excruciatingly loud breathing of the woman beside him, the roar of his blood in his temples. He thought Shepard might order them to take the shot, but in the moment he saw her nod the leader lifted the gun from Chairman Burns' skull and let it clatter to the ground.

From that razor-fine moment, time stretched and pulled apart. He saw Shepard speak without hearing the words; saw the terrorists place their hands on their heads; saw the chairman get to his feet and rub his shaking hands over his own head, as if to check it was still intact. He saw Shepard speaking into her comm, calling the Fifth Fleet, saw her make her way to the airlock, saw the odd pattern her bright hair made against the dull greys and blacks of space. He saw her avoid his gaze, the muscles in her jaw twitching.

And in the end, he was indeed able to make it to the medbay before he succumbed to unconsciousness.

* * *

It took three hours to resolve the hostage situation. When the Fifth Fleet vessel was only a spot in the dark distance, Shepard stormed through the halls to the workstation just to the right of her cabin, where she expected a certain Lieutenant would currently be resuming his duties. She was a fuming ball of uncontained, diffuse temper, too vast to manage, too difficult to put away.

She figured she was owed a place to put it.

She'd been rejected, slighted, and wounded by this man. She had watched him take control of a tense hostage situation, speaking just the right words in just the right tone of voice, smooth and calm as the surface of the sea. If she hadn't been furious with him, she might have curled up and taken refuge in that voice, lived there for all her days. As it was, it only served to remind her that days ago they had flown into each other's arms and then he had pushed her away, using her title like a weapon, wielding it to wound. At this moment, she hated him.

She'd been building up to a blistering lecture when she rounded the corner and saw that his workstation was empty. Abruptly the anger melted away and left a gut-curdling fear in its place. Dozens of odd little details from the last mission came rushing back – his unfocused gaze, his poor marksmanship, the sheen of sweat she had seen beading at his brow.

She saw Liara hovering outside the medbay, looking somewhat lost. "Have you seen Lieutenant Alenko?" Shepard asked, struggling to keep her voice composed.

Liara nodded. "He's inside."

The vague strains of panic crystallized into something solid and heavy, and she pushed into the medbay before consciously deciding to. It could be anything, she feared – residual damage from the Thorian, a wound she hadn't seen him take, maybe even an infection from the pins. She had been about to accost Dr. Chakwas when she saw Kaidan reclined on one of the beds, completely motionless.

"What is it?" she blurted before she could stop herself.

"Commander," Chakwas said, nodding. "It's just a migraine. A fairly severe one, but nothing I'm not able to treat."

"Is he awake?"

"Yes," Kaidan said, and he lifted one hand in a strange approximation of a salute, missing his head by a good few inches.

"Could you leave us alone for a moment, Doctor?"

"Of course, Commander. I'll just be outside."

Even after the doctor had left them alone, she found it nearly impossible to force the words past the block of fury and fear that had frozen in her throat. Vacillating so quickly between the extremes had left her feeling dizzy and exhausted, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to sleep for a few thousand years.

"What can I do for you, Commander?" Kaidan said finally, when the silence grew too long. His tone was wary, and – dare she even think it? – apologetic.

She didn't know why hearing him call her Commander infuriated her to such a degree. For all intents and purposes, that was what she was and would probably always be. Especially to him. Right – that was what infuriated her. "I wanted to know what the hell came over you," she said, making her voice sharp, fashioning it to wound.

"Today? You weren't getting through. I saw a chance."

"It wasn't your place to make that call."

"Why else did you bring me?"

"To shoot some terrorists and follow orders!"

She considered herself lucky that Kaidan's eyes were covered by a damp rag, otherwise she wouldn't be able to maintain the necessary rage at him, the rage that she needed to get through this.

"Should we talk about what this is really about?" Kaidan asked her softly.

And how she hated him at that moment – hated his gentle voice, hated the lean lines of him, straight and supine on his hospital bed, hated that in his pain he seemed to have reached some place of clarity, where in her anger she felt more muddled and childish than ever, totally unable to rein in her inappropriate and stupid temper. "No," she snapped. "I was just – I saw that something was wrong, and I …" she trailed off.

"I'm sorry if I made you worry," he said.

How dare he see right through her rage, right to the fearful heart of what she felt. "I wasn't worried," she said coldly. "I only wondered why you weren't at your station, doing your job."

"Right," Kaidan echoed, and she was not imagining the hurt in his voice. Thank god his eyes were covered, she mourned, thank god. What was she doing here? Why did she storm in, throw around a few barbs, trying to make things worse? Why did she need him to hate her as much as she hated herself?

She fled before he could say anything else, before she could jam her foot any further down her throat, before she could confess that she was worried and hurt and angry and this odd stalemate between them was intolerable. But Shepard, like her mother, was an expert at personal avoidance, and she saw no way to change.

 


	22. Chapter 22

After their confrontation in the medbay, Shepard and Kaidan did not speak for two weeks.

Though this was perhaps inaccurate. They spoke to exchange details pertaining to work, to their duties. She gave orders, her voice deadened and impersonal, and he obeyed with a rigid-backed salute. But it was nothing like before. And in that regard, their words were so impersonal as to not even exist.

This shouldn't have mattered. If the life made sense and operated in a fair manner, she would not even have noticed. Kaidan Alenko would have been nothing more to her than a Lieutenant, a subordinate. A comrade, at the very most. Someone solid and trustworthy to have at her back while on the field. They would have to exchange words on the ship, of course; reports, duty postings. That would have been acceptable. If she'd been smart, she'd have kept it in such terms from the beginning, despite the odd attraction she felt for him. It wouldn't have mattered that he was interesting and skilled, kind and handsome. It  _shouldn't_  have mattered.

But she wasn't smart. She was an idiot.

Deprived of Kaidan, she threw herself into her work. She knew it was a weak attempt to rectify her mistake – focusing on some man like a love-struck moron – but the reason made no difference now. The result mattered, and it was better late than never. She answered Hackett's every call. She led her team to distant worlds, through missions Command did not trust to anyone else. She deactivated a rouge AI on Luna base, pursued a distress signal of a downed medical ship on Metgos, brought a cult leader to justice without losing a single man. She did it all flawlessly, without entertaining emotions or any other distraction. She was Commander Shepard as the galaxy expected, and almost nothing like herself.

But if she was being honest with herself, it felt good to work. To be Commander Shepard, like she had been before this mission. Before Saren and the geth, before the Reapers. Before Kaidan. What an odd turn of events, that she should be made to long for those days, that she should find them relatively uncomplicated and ultimately preferable to the present.

Most surprising to this post-Kaidan Normandy was the quiet hours between missions, when her thoughts would wander back to nightmares, when the tremors would ripple up her hands. She had resigned herself to doing the requisite sweeps of the decks before sequestering herself in her quarters, hunched over her console and typing up report after report, feverishly trying not to think about anything irrelevant and painful at all. But her crew made this unnecessary.

They sought her out, now. They plied her for stories and advice, and offered some of their own. Tali regaled her with tales from the Migrant Fleet, and though they came from different sides of the galaxy, they were familiar enough to Shepard, who had herself grown up on a ship. Liara pushed past her natural awkwardness and curiosity about the Protheans for the sake of common conversation. Even Wrex made an effort. And Shepard found herself thankful for it.

She unlatched her armor and stored in her locker, ignoring Ashley's pointed stare with as much poise as she could manage. A bead of sweat teased the end of her nose before falling, and she swiped the back of her hand over her brow, pushing back the damp hair stuck to her forehead. Before, she might have felt self-conscious that Kaidan should see her in such a state – her shirt clinging oddly to her skinny frame, her hair a sweaty rat's nest from hours under a helmet – but now there was no point in worrying. She was disgusting, and he was not interested. There was a kind of freedom in that.

"Commander Shepard?" She turned. It was Garrus, his mandibles twitching in a gesture she had learned to recognize as anxiety.

She shut her locker. "Garrus. What can I do for you?"

"Was wondering if you had a minute."

"For you, I have ten," she grinned, and he laughed. It was more a joke than he knew; likely she had an oversupply, with not enough to do to fill them.

They made their way to Garrus' workstation, and though she had professed to not caring, she self-consciously batted at her disgusting hair, struggling to get it to lie flat and smooth. She was dying to take a shower. She needed to relax a catch in her shoulder, and to rinse off the grime and dirt from their last mission; a harrowing trap that the geth had laid, one that they'd barely escaped.

Garrus paused, his shoulders tight. She watched him shift his weight from foot to foot, like she'd seen him do on the field; anxious for the fighting to start, wary of flanking maneuvers. Finally, he turned to face her. "I've been thinking about Saren."

She should have guessed. Hardly any other subject could distress Garrus to such a degree. Not even Dr. Saleon, the one who'd gotten away. "I have too," she admitted quietly.

"It feels like he's always one step ahead of us," Garrus said bitterly. "That no matter how close we get, he's going to beat us to the finish line. None of this will make any difference."

It was like he'd summoned the contents of her personal fears for the sake of conversation. She felt herself straightening reflexively, shifting into Commander Mode. "We'll get him, Garrus. We're getting closer every day."

"I don't know," Garrus said. "He's been at this a lot longer than any of us. Just like with the colony today; we get a call, we rush over thinking maybe just this time intel's on the ball and we'll catch him with his pants down just long enough for us to get a face full of geth fire. And I just start to wonder if he's always going to be one step ahead. If he'll bring back the Reapers while we're still trying our best to catch up."

"But we  _are_  catching up," Shepard insisted. "Take today, for instance. Didn't you notice a difference in the resistance?"

Garrus paused his pacing. "No."

"There was no real core to the attack. They were scattered, scrambling to cover something. Probably Saren, probably whatever he was doing. We're getting closer."

"I don't know, Commander."

"I do," she said firmly. "We have to keep trying, Garrus. We've got to keep pursuing, because Saren's going to get sloppy. He'll make a mistake. We can't let ourselves get tired or discouraged, not now. Not when things are so close."

Shepard had grown quite skilled at encouragement; even when she was exhausted and heart sore, and too weary for her words to have any effect on herself. She knew the right things to say, and the right tone to say them in; all of it so familiar, a habit borne of necessary repetition and innate skill. She knew it, and when Garrus relaxed slightly it registered as victory.

"All right," he said. "I'll take your word for it."

"When all of this is over, you won't have to," she told him.

"Heh. Thanks Commander."

She smiled and turned to go, but before she could leave Garrus cleared his throat. "Ah – could I ask you one more thing, Commander?"

"Sure," she said, leaning against the Mako with arms crossed.

This time Garrus did not beat around the bush. "What are you going to do with Saren when you catch him?"

"Turn him over to the Council, probably," she said. "There's not much precedent with this kind of situation. But he was their agent; it should be up to them to decide what happens to him."

"You'd let him live?" Garrus asked, incredulous. "After all he's done? All the people he's killed, all the time he's gotten away?"

Temper pricked at her thoughts. "What are you suggesting?" she asked, voice hard.

"You should kill him the second you got a clear shot. It's the only way to be sure he can't do anything like this again," Garrus insisted. "He can't kill people if he's dead."

"I'd kill him only if I didn't have any other choice," Shepard said. "I'm not going to blow him away if I have other options. And honestly, I think that's something you should consider."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you've got a situation where you have a chance to take someone in, you should take it. You're not an arbiter of justice. It's not up to you to dispense punishment for crimes. Your job is to neutralize threats with as little collateral damage as possible Otherwise, you become just like Saren." Her eyes narrowed. "How do you think he got started? Doing the right thing, but doing it his way. Screw the bystanders. He was all about the goal, and he didn't care who got caught in the crossfire."

"That's not the same –"

"It is," Shepard cut him off. "It's the same as some hotshot cop with an itchy trigger finger blowing up a ship full of hostages to get the bad guy. It's exactly the same."

Garrus looked at her as if she'd punched him. "Commander—"

"Just think about it, is all I'm saying." She pushed away from the Mako. "Anything else?"

"No, Commander," Garrus said, and she heard a catch in his tone. "Thanks for your time."

She strode away without looking back, struggling to control the rise of heat in her cheeks. She hadn't meant to lecture, or to get so upset. She liked Garrus very much; he was skilled and earnest, and he clearly cared about right and wrong. But she could not agree with such stark moralistic stances, which did not allow for any interpretation or consideration of context. Had he the power to, he would have killed innocent people to bring a killer to justice. And she'd devoted quite a lot of time pursuing another turian with similar tendencies.

She stepped into the lift and scrubbed at her cheeks with flat palms, but it was no use. They were still flushed with quick anger, and her pulse pounded in her ears. She couldn't even control her stupid outbursts with the other crew these days. Her temper now operated on a hair trigger. The slightest thing was liable to set her off, and she couldn't stand it. She had the memory of her mother stark in her mind, who kept herself calm and controlled even under incredible duress, even in the thick of battle, even when her horrible daughter shouted abuses in her face. Shepard figured she must have gotten her stupid temper from her father. Whoever he was.

She counted to ten and then backwards, taking slow, even breaths. In for four, out for five. Nice and easy. If she really worked at it, she could be calm and controlled. She could take even breaths and stack herself straight, make herself impenetrable, impossible to move. She felt the lift slowly rise and prayed that a certain Lieutenant that she had no desire to face today was not at his station. The last thing she needed was for him to see her in her current state - flushed face and rat nest hair and all.

The lift doors flew open, and a certain Lieutenant stepped on her feet.

She stumbled backwards, flailing for purchase, and before she could bat his hands away they shot out, gripping her tightly by the arms. He was close, so close – he was looking at her in all her rat-haired sweaty, disgusting glory. He was close enough to touch, to breathe in, so close that she was abruptly dizzy as a rush of heat flooded her face again, though this time not from temper. She saw his eyes go wide as he realized at the same moment what she did; the last time they'd been this close, they'd been entwined in a dark alley on the Citadel, and his lips had been on her neck.

Abruptly they sprang apart. "Are you all right?" Kaidan asked. She saw his hands go rigid at his sides, as if it had been awful to touch her. He was probably reconsidering ever having found her attractive or interesting. She couldn't say she blamed him.

That was it. Her humiliation was now complete. "I'm fine," she said, temper making her tone sharp. "Watch where you're going, Lieutenant."

She stormed away with as much dignity as she could manage with rat hair and a splotchy face. Only when she'd closed her cabin door behind her did the façade crumble. She slid down the wall, palms pressing hard enough into her eyes to summon whirling geometric shapes, and wished space-time would sunder and swallow her whole.

* * *

"You alright?"

Kaidan looked up from his datapad. Ashley was staring at him with an expression he was growing uncomfortably accustomed to: arched brow, eyes narrowed suspiciously, arms crossed over her chest. Like she didn't quite trust that he was all there.

He cleared his throat. "I'm fine."

"You look like shit."

"Your tact is appreciated, as always."

Her glare intensified to such a degree that it actually made him fidget. "Let's cut the crap, all right? You know I know."

"I was hoping you'd pick up on the fact that I don't really want to talk about it."

"You never want to talk about it. You never want to talk about anything. You'd be happy if I fell off the face of the earth and never bothered you about anything ever again."

"That's not true," he said, and despite himself he grinned. "I don't know what I'd do with myself if you fell off the face of the earth."

"I do," Ashley said, and she grinned too. "Never say another word about anything ever again."

"I'd probably keep saying things like 'hello'," Kaidan put in.

"God, you are a smartass."

"Am I?"

She whipped a datapad at his head, which he neatly dodged. "Nice job avoiding the question, you asshole. Now how about you answer it?"

He'd known that Ashley was impossible to distract, but it made him feel better to try. He thought of Shepard on the lift, her eyes going wide as he caught her, his hands on her arms. Her face flushed, shock giving way to heated indignation. He remembered how nice it had been to touch her, despite the walls he'd built around those thoughts, the precautions he'd taken for moments like this. How easily they came to nothing.

He could no more admit any of this than he could go for a pleasant spacewalk without his hardsuit. "I don't know. Not really sleeping."

All traces of laughter left her expression, and she was suddenly as serious as he felt. "Migraines?"

"Not so much, lately. Just … thinking about this mission a lot. About the people getting hit by the geth."

Ashley was somber; she'd had experience enough with this. "Yeah."

"And, well. Weird dreams."

"What about?"

He shifted in his seat. "I can't really remember."

It was mostly true, but missing its essential core: that, shamefully, this was not the whole truth, that Shepard haunted what little sleep he could manage, that she came to him as she'd been that night on the Citadel – breathless, a wanting sound caught in the back of her throat, and the way her hands felt on his skin, in his hair. That he would wake up twisted in blankets, breathing heavily, wanting her so badly that it registered as pain. That every day that passed without talking to her and being close to her brought him that much closer to throwing up his hands and saying to hell with it all; he would talk to her, he would allow himself to love her, and damn the consequences.

Of course it was all well and good to think this is the private safety of his thoughts. But he was well versed in the myriad ways things could go wrong when desire was involved. Even worse when you threw love into the mix. Not that he'd done so deliberately.

But, there it was.

"You ever think about trying to make yourself so tired that you're too tired to even dream?" Ashley asked him.

He shook his head. "Does that actually work?"

She shrugged. "Works for me. Then again, I don't dream that much."

"That'd be nice," he said, and rubbed the back of his neck. He didn't elaborate further, though a part of him was nearly desperate to admit these failings, to better put them behind him. Because he had decided, after their confrontation in the med bay, that it was best if he unobtrusively removed himself from her personal life. He could be a Lieutenant and she a Commander, but anything more was too tempting. Anything more would give him a chance to think about what it had been like to walk beside her, as easily as if he belonged there. He would remember the feel of her hand at the crook of his elbow, the line of her pressed against him, and he couldn't. The dreams were bad enough.

He stood, stretching. "Probably should get something to eat."

"Want some company?"

"Not if you're not hungry. Thanks, though," he said, and smiled for her benefit.

"No problem, LT. Try and relax a little. Everything's going to work out."

"You know that for sure, huh?"

"I do, in fact," she said, grinning. "I am blessed with infallible powers of precognition. I see your future as clearly as I see your face."

"Yeah? What happens in my future?"

Her grin widened and she closed her eyes, massaging her temples. "I see it now … you and Shepard get married. You save the galaxy from the geth and the Reapers. And … you have three kids. They're adorable."

He laughed, because it was ridiculous. "And where are you in this impossible future?"

"I'm Best Lady at your wedding, for putting up with your crap long enough to get you two together. I catch the bouquet and marry a hot C-Sec officer. And then I'm cool Aunt Ashley. I get your kids totally inappropriate presents and they love me for it."

"You would," he said, laughing. "And they would, too."

She brightened. "See? Everything's going to work out."

"I'll take your word for it," he said. "Thanks, Ash."

"Anytime, LT."

It was impossible, he knew. Love alone didn't make a future certain, not even for civilians who had the freedom to pursue such things. But he wouldn't deny that there was something wonderful about the thought – Shepard in white, on his arm, smiling up at him as she spoke her vows. Being free to kiss her whenever the thought crossed his mind. Late nights spent talking over drinks, listening to jazz, lazy mornings in bed. He came from two happily married people, and though it was illogical and unlikely, he couldn't help entertaining such thoughts for himself, for at least a moment.

He was still smiling when he stepped onto the Crew deck, so lost in his own foolish fantasies that he didn't immediately see Shepard in the back corner, with someone he did not immediately recognize.

But he heard her voice, impossibly loud in the quiet of the ship.

"You know that I care about you, Shepard," she said softly. Liara's voice. And between them, Liara's hands curled around Shepard's. Holding tightly, tenderly.

Close enough to kiss.


	23. Chapter 23

In hindsight, Shepard probably should have expected something like this.

Not that she routinely went about her life expecting people to confess romantic feelings for her. It always came as a surprise, because he didn’t see herself as empirically worth attraction. She was a good soldier, a decent leader, pretty damn handy with a gun, but utterly abysmal at feelings. In her experience, it made any attempts at connection a doomed, futile effort.

She winced. If only she’d kept this in mind with Kaidan, instead of pacing awkward, wanting circles around the other and forgetting that she was not meant for it. But she’d been distracted by the sense that it was inevitable, that connection of such magnitude could not be denied, and they were destined. Stupid, childish, romantic notions.  She would chalk it up to another learning experience and leave it all behind. This was exactly why she should put this shit away and focus on her job.

She stared into Liara’s achingly earnest expression before dropping her gaze to their entwined hands. She noted physical details as if from a great distance, as if she no longer properly resided in her own head. _Her skin is a nice shade of blue,_ Shepard thought vaguely.   _They’re cold. She’s trembling. She’s nervous about this._  That made her wince again. Either way she sliced it, this was going to be an incredibly painful, awkward conversation. Because she too understood what it felt like to lay your heart out, every pathetic, small corner, every scrap of darkness, for it to be rejected. God, she knew. She was still recoiling from that particular pain.

Liara swallowed, seeming to steel herself. And at that exact moment, she was incomparably beautiful in her bravery -- far more than Shepard, a battle-hardened soldier, had ever managed, on the field or off. “I … care about you. I know that I don’t know you very well, and you’re -- well, you’re Shepard.”

“I’m not sure that means as much as you think,” Shepard joked weakly.

Liara’s lips curved into a hesitant smile, but she forged ahead. “You’re an incredible woman. When I look at you out of the corner of my eye, I can almost see it around you, like … like light? Like an aura. You’re meant for incredible things, and I just … I wanted you to know going into them that I care about you, and I -- I want to be there for it.”

Shepard blinked. What kind of confession was this, exactly? “I don’t know what you mean. You’re a member of my crew, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course. And I’m so thankful for that, more than I can say. Not many would have trusted me knowing who my mother was.”

“We aren’t the same people as our mothers,” Shepard said softly. For Liara this was a blessing; for Shepard, it was the lowest curse. If only she could resemble Captain Hannah Shepard, cold as ice, assured of every step beneath her feet. If only she could navigate life with such surety, such command.

“It’s true … and I’m glad for it,” Liara said, with a trace of steel in her voice. “But that wasn’t my point. I just -- I wanted you to know that I want to -- I want to be in your life. I want you to feel like you can talk to me, about anything.”

Relief flooded through Shepard with such force that it made her light-headed, liable to stumble. Maybe this wasn’t a romantic confession after all. “You sure about that?”she said with a dumb grin. “I’m pretty annoying when I get going. Lots of ranting, lots of complaining. Lots of watching me make stupid personal decisions.”

“I’m sure that’s not -- goddess,” Liara said. Her hands shuddered. “I would … want to be a part of those … personal decisions.”

And the swell of relief came crashing down, with all the violence of a ship piercing atmo, burying itself planetside. Shepard’s stupid grin froze on her face, more out of place and pathetic than ever before. It was clear there would be no such luck, in this or anything else. “ … Oh.”

“And -- Shepard, I just want you to know that I don’t -- I don’t expect anything. I just wanted you to know, because … well, I suppose I hoped maybe you felt the same and were just trying to be professional.”

Someone else might have made it sound more noble. Shepard smiled again, though it lacked its earlier intensity. “At least you’re honest,” she said softly.

“I just couldn’t keep it to myself anymore,” Liara said, trembling.

Shepard was struck at that moment how impossibly young Liara seemed. Technically, she was older to the tune of a few decades, maybe even a century -- she’d never outright asked Liara how old she was -- but it was clear both in the span of asari lifetimes and in terms of her personality, Liara was very, very young. Never more so than now, when she took Shepard’s hands and eagerly, earnestly confessed the contents of her heart. Only the truly young could do something so brave. Only those relatively untouched, or otherwise possessing some innate courage despite it. Shepard had neither.

Carefully, she withdrew her hands from Liara’s grip, but not before giving them a gentle squeeze. “I’m --”

“You don’t have to say it,” Liara said, looking away. A delicate, purple flush decorated her cheeks. “Goddess, I’m a fool.”

“Nah, you aren’t. Seriously, you aren’t! Do you think you’re the first person this kind of thing’s happened to?” Mercy made her bold; it only figured that she offered such pure honesty with some of her own. “Look, this may surprise you, but the same thing just happened to me. Kind of. With me standing where you are right now. I mean, the details are a little different, but the gist is the same. I -- I put myself out there, and the other person didn’t really feel the same. Or they did but they didn’t want to … ugh. Anyway. It’s not really the same, but it felt pretty much the same. I think.”

Her lips pursed, brow crumpling with empathy and embarrassment. She wasn’t wise, or learned, or experienced or whatever. She was a disaster. She was good for one thing: being a soldier. Shooting a gun in service to some strategic goal. In everything else she was a fucking mess.  

But she felt an oddly tender swell of feeling for Liara. It wasn’t the kind she wanted. It wasn’t romance, and it would never become romance. She realized in that moment that Liara reminded her a little sister, like what Shepard imagined a little sister would be like, from her talks with Ashley -- a little sister that was a different species, and also a few decades older, but regardless -- someone to protect, to look after. That was how you treated family, wasn’t it?

She gently took Liara’s shoulder and gave her a little shake. “I’m not an expert at this shit. Like, you heard it here first. But my point is that … it’s fine. And it’s not the end of the world. And I guess … for a person that matters, it doesn’t matter how they are in your life. Not that I’m saying you should keep pining, because that’s awful -- no one would want that, especially not me. But I hope that … I don’t know.” She cradled her brow with her hand.  “Christ, I’m even worse at this than he was.”

“You mean the Lieutenant.”

Shepard blinked, for a moment, completely at a loss. “ … How did you know?”

A delicate shrug. “I’m not completely unobservant.”

“Right … well, my point is that it’s okay. And … I mean … he matters enough that I’ll just … I’ll deal with it. And I’ll put it away, or try to. And I’ll marry the job, like my mom did, because that’s the smartest way to handle this stuff.  So that's what I'm hoping for. For you, I mean. I just -- And look, I get it if it’s awkward around me and you want me to leave you alone for awhile while you --”

“-sort it out,” Liara said with a little smile.

“Yeah. Like, I’d understand that.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Liara said with a bit of her former composure. “I hoped you would feel the same way I do about you, but I didn’t expect you would. I just wanted you to know, because …”A tender pause. “Because it’s better to be honest. My mother wasn’t, and I -- I won’t make her mistakes.”

And there it was; for all of Hannah Shepard’s strengths, her innumerable victories both personal and professional, emotional honesty was not one of them. Shepard pushed an anxious hand through her hair. “Yeah.”

“So … if you don’t mind, I’m going to … go.”

“Yeah! Yeah. I mean -- yeah.”

“There’s something I should --”

“Yeah, definitely.” _Shut up,_ Shepard chastised herself. _Before you make this worse._ “Have fun.”

_Nice work._

She watched Liara slip back through the med bay with both relief and regret warring for prominence in her heart; relief that she’d managed to navigate this treacherous interaction with as few awkward blunders as was possible, regret that she couldn’t return what had been so honestly given.

But there wasn’t much of a choice for her. She’d been honest too, when she told Liara that it wouldn’t matter how he existed in her life. It only mattered that he did.

She’d been such an idiot. Proud, foolish; she’d acted like a child being denied a toy they’d set their sights on, merely because of her slighted pride. Who liked being rejected? Who found it enjoyable? Yet here was Liara, who for all of her lack of experience still managed to handle it better than Shepard had. She’d been kind -- hurt, but understanding. And there was no doubt in Shepard’s mind that she’d get over it, more an adult than Shepard had been.

Had she thought to protect Liara? Suddenly the extent of her arrogance was clear; Liara could take care of herself, and she’d managed to do so, all while showing Shepard a thing or two. Shepard, supposedly a professional, the first Human Spectre. A great, flaming idiot. With a long, trembling  sigh, she shuffled across the deck to her quarters, humbled and lost and alone. A migraine pushed at the center of her forehead, and she tried not to think about why that was significant.

~

She prepared. Unlike her previous tack during her first foray into this lunacy, she considered her options -- carefully, as she might consider the battlefield. For once, she put everything aside but the facts, and treated even her stupid feelings like facts; she laid them out like a map, like her mission. It was only a small part, of course, but if she was to be an effective soldier and leader, she shouldn’t have something so large unresolved in her head.

She would tell him the truth. She could do that. It was easy -- it was all right there, floating at the top of her thoughts. Practically tattooed on her forehead. She could tell him exactly how she felt about him, and exactly why it was a bad idea to proceed. She could probably thank him for being smart enough to put a stop to it, before it’d really gotten out of control.

No; not could. Should. She should thank him. Shamed heat rushed to her face as she considered the depths of her foolishness, the myriad ways she had proceeded to cheerfully fuck up her life like some teenager with a first crush. She could have done something really idiotic while on duty, while on a mission; while in public. She had, as a matter of fact. She’d let Ashley talk her into getting all dressed up, and she’d gone on to act like they were civilians and not soldiers, like she wasn’t his commanding officer. In public. With a profile like hers! Like this stupid shit wasn’t a minefield already. Worse, she’d been furious with him for putting a stop to it, which was of course the right thing to do. It was why she loved him -- his steadiness, his tendency toward logical consideration. He was solid ground to stand on, and she’d lashed out at him for it.

She buried her face in her hands, palms digging hard into her eye sockets. _Get it together,_ she chastised herself. _Fix this._

She could do that. She could try, anyway. He was too smart for her shit -- too smart to ruin his career over what was probably a dalliance. Too smart to let her back in after the way she’d acted, even as friends. But if they were to be comrades, the air had to be clear between them. And she could at least apologize. She owed him that.

* * *

 

They were a day out from Noveria, which meant Kaidan became even more remote than usual.

He clunked down to the armory and checked his gear with the pressure of imminent battle in his mind -- anticipating a thousand small disasters, so he might better react to them. For a while, he calibrated his Omni-tool with Tali, exchanging perfunctory tech chatter. Normally he might grin at her incredible insight, but deployment made him terse, and it wasn’t long before she disappeared back to the engine room. He couldn’t blame her. The hum of the eezo core was probably better company than he was.

Part of his mood might have been due to the scene he’d stumbled upon the night before. He’d left as soon as he’d seen Liara take Shepard’s hands, but it was enough. It made sense. It was better this way; he couldn’t exactly see how, but he took that for fact.

He cleaned his guns and armor with slow, methodical motion, examining every nook and cranny with a critical eye. He liked this work. He was best in preparation; with the chance to soothe his many anxieties by foresight. You couldn’t know exactly the shape of the future, but you could prepare for it. You could do that much.

“I don’t know why you do that shit,” Ashley was saying, leaning casually against the row of lockers. “You clean your guns and armor when we come back, too.”

“I might have missed something.”

“You? LT Hospital Corners?” She scoffed. “That’s a good one.”

“Ash.”

“I’m serious! We got a regular comedian over here. Tell me; do you prepare your material beforehand, or are you a wing it kind of guy?”

He shot her a look. “I don’t think any performers wing it.”

“Sure they do. You know, guys that play jazz, they basically make stuff up off the top of their heads.”

“No, they don’t. They practice scales and phrases beforehand.”

“Man … so you’re telling me that even the guys who make stuff up on the fly aren’t making stuff up?! There’s no honesty in this world. It’s not half as impressive if they’re just doing what they practiced.”

He rocked back, eyeing her critically. “You don’t think someone practicing their entire lives for flawless mastery is impressive? Practicing so hard that it’s second nature, and it just comes to them, so smoothly that everyone listening thinks they’re composing on the spot?”

“Geez, LT,” Ashley said delightedly, craning closer. “Did I hit a nerve?”

“No.”

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s the day before we deploy; you’re all nerve.”

He sighed. “I’m just tired.”

“Of me, right?”

“No.”

“Hm …”

She plopped down next to him, propping her feet on the front of her locker and tapping an unsteady rhythm, grinning as the surface rattled in response. “I’m just giving you trouble. I finished all this shit last night.”

“Really?”

“What can I say? You’re rubbing off on me.”

This made him smile.

“Now if only I’d rub off you a little bit.”

“That so, huh?”

“Yeah. If only you’d throw caution to the wind, seize the day. You know. Carpe diem, and all that.”

“Keep dreaming, Chief.”

“I’m serious! _‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may/ Old Time is still a-flying;/And this same flower that smiles today/ Tomorrow will be dying.’”_

He looked at her. “Pretty grim, coming from you.”

“It’s one of the good ones,” she argued. “One of my favorites.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because you don’t know when your number is up. Especially us, since we’re soldiers -- we’re always in the shit, ankle deep. Sometimes knee deep. You just don’t know. So you have to take what you can, and say what you mean, while you still can.”

His hands slowed over the surface of his hardsuit, stalled by her insight. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect her to be smart, to have a good eye on the situation; he did, more than she knew. She was an incredible soldier and a better friend, and she was often telling him to pick up his feet and stop being so cautious. It was one of her favorite lectures, in fact. But there was a new urgency to her words; a new intensity to her features as she spoke. A thrill of premonition coursed through him, chasing down his spine until he shuddered.

“Maybe one of these days that’ll sink in,” she said, affecting her earlier mood, but there was a strain in her voice.

“Maybe,” he echoed.

He thought about it as they worked in silence. He was accustomed to his way of doing things -- of measuring a situation and ascertaining the best way forward, based on prudent design. He could handle quite a lot if he parsed life in such terms. It made him a solid, reliable soldier, but it also made him a coward when it came to his personal affairs.

He hadn’t had much room to think about it before Shepard. There’d be someone every now and then that caught his eye, but it was a distant thing -- easy to put away. A brief interest, easily quashed. Since Rahna, he’d kept it that way by design. It was smart to be circumspect, to keep his personal life free of complication and distraction, because he was a biotic and a soldier, and this was his chosen profession. There was very little room for anything else.

But Shepard … she was different. He’d known from the beginning that she was different. He liked her -- not just as a woman, but as a companion. They’d somehow forged a connection without his really knowing or being aware of it. He found himself fascinated by her -- the distance between her professional affect and the awkward, tender woman that lived beneath the armor. He thought about her at night; her eyes, bright with laughter,  half-lidded by want. He though about that sliver thin scar running through her full lips, and what it had been like to probe its dimension with his tongue. He thought about how soft she been, how sweet she had tasted, and a fire lit through his veins, made his heart race. He would shudder, twist and turn in his bunk. It was better than the burn of red sand; more terrifying, a deeper drop, into a place he could not see.  The intensity of it had scared him.

And he had let that fear override everything.

He remembered the hurt in her expression as he’d callously used her title as a wedge between them. She was the Commander, and she knew it better than anyone. How could he have done that? What was wrong with him?

He was still trying to figure it out when he heard familiar footsteps approach behind him. Ashley started, her feet lifting from the front of her locker. His own heart rocketed from his gut to his throat, wedging itself against the back of his tongue until he couldn’t have said a word if his life depended on it.

It was probably a little pathetic that he had a more discernable reaction to the sight of a woman than he did a real threat -- a gun sighting down the center of his forehead, a beast about to rend him in two. But she wasn’t just any woman. And with this in mind, he forgave himself for his racing heart, his sweating palms. Carefully, he laid the component pieces of his gun on the table and leapt to a salute. “Can I help you, Commander?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice grim and steady. She looked more like the war hero from the posters than he’d ever seen her, and for some reason it made him hopelessly sad. As if she was already gone from him, beyond his reach. He’d called her Commander to separate them, and she had taken that title upon herself like a mantle, wore it proudly, as if nothing in life fit her better. Perhaps nothing did. “I’d like to talk to you. Alone, if you don’t mind.”

 

 


End file.
